UK's National Theatre Set to Broadcast Productions to Movie Screens

London's National Theatre announced Wednesday, Jan. 14th, that it will transmit live performances to movie theaters around the world in a quest to widen its audience and test the public appeal for watching stage productions onscreen.

The first of four planned simulcasts will be the June 25th performance of Jean Racine's tragedy "Phedre" starring Academy Award-winning actress Helen Mirren and mega hit "Mamma Mia" film star Dominic Cooper.

The National's artistic director Nicholas Hytner said Mirren, who won a best actress Oscar for "The Queen," was "tremendously excited" by the idea.

The performance will be broadcast live by satellite to 50 British cinemas, and will be shown within 24 hours at another 100 movie theaters in countries including the United States and Canada. Tickets in Britain will cost about 10 pounds ($15).

The three remaining plays have yet to be chosen for the future broadcasts.

The Metropolitan Opera has run a successful series of live broadcasts for several years now, butin commenting on the venture Hytner said trying it with plays had a real risk, "There's a danger it might feel theatrical in all the wrong ways," he said. "We simply don't know.

The National, UK's flagship state-funded theater has enjoyed a run of highly successful seasons since Hytner took over the helm in 2003, his production of Alan Bennett's "The History Boys" was a smash and continued the success with a healthy Broadway run as well.

New productions for 2009 include a still-untitled new play by Bennett that features an imaginary late-life meeting between poet W.H. Auden and composer Benjamin Britten. There is also a play for young people based on Terry Pratchett's fantastical novel "Nation," set on a desert island after a devastating tsunami.

It was announced that the National also will mount a stage adaptation of Hanif Kureishi's "extraordinarily prescient" 1990s novel "The Black Album".

Actor Dominic Cooper has been cast in the role of Hippolytus in The National Theatre's upcoming revival of Phèdre. Co-starring Helen Mirren in the title role and directed by Nicholas Hytner, Artistic Director of The National Theatre, Jean Racine's 1677 classic tragedy is based on a Greek myth about a queen who falls passionately in love with her stepson in her husband's absence.

Phèdre is currently scheduled to begin performances at the National's Lyttleton Theatre in June 2009 (exact dates TBD), in a production sponsored by Coutts & Co. Also previously confirmed for the cast is Margaret Tyzack, who will star as Oenone, the nurse and confidante of Mirren's character.

The upcoming production of Phèdre marks the fourth collaboration between Cooper and Hytner, following their previous work together in The National Theatre productions of Mother Clap's Molly House, His Dark Materials, and The History Boys.

For more information visit,www.nationaltheatre.org.uk

 

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