Hamlet (City Screen – Manchester Royal Exchange, 27th March 2015)

I saw Maxine Peake as Hamlet back in September 2014. Seeing the production live was an amazing electrifying experience.  Of course, I was curious to see if Peake would play Hamlet as a man, or as a woman. Actually, she played the part as neither.  The male pronoun was retained and the rest of the characters referred to Hamlet as a man. However, Peake’s Hamlet was really gender neutral.  This production was about the person and not the gender. There were other gender swaps, Polonius became Polonia (Gillian Bevan) and Rosencrantz was played by the incredible Jodie Mcnee. McNee had just played Viola at the Liverpool Playhouse so will have been getting used to gender swap, but here her portrayal of Rosencrantz was very effective and at times gave a hint of a crush on Hamlet.

Seeing the production again in a cinema was a strange one. Manchester Royal Exchange is a theatre in the round, it challenges you to look around you, to be alert to the different entrances and exits.  It’s a dynamic space that puts you close up to the action.

The screening also puts you close to the action, but the camera chooses how you see things.  It directs your eye to look right into faces, and follows characters around the stage for you.  Most of the time you follow Hamlet, when he sits down for the wedding feast, and as she crumples in grief in her to ‘to solid flesh’ speech.  That’s to be expected, but I’m also interested in how the other characters respond, and in a cinema screening those moments can be cut.  There are also shots you just wouldn’t get in the theatre, such as looking down directly at all the clothes that become Ophelia’s grave, and we also got a birds eye view of the laying out the dress to show this was Ophelia’s burial.

I think I am happy watching screened versions of Theatre productions as a follow up to seeing the production myself in the theatre. For me, the screening is not a substitute for being in the theatre and close to the action.

Reviews of the stage production

Cast

Horatio – Thomas Arnold

Player King / Marcella – Claire Benedict

Polonia – Gillian Bevan

First Gravedigger – Michelle Butterly

Lucianus – Dean Gregory

Reynaldo/ Priest/ Francisco – Tachia Newall

Gertrude – Barbara Marten

Rosencrantz/ Second Gravedigger – Jodie McNee

Hamlet – Maxine Peake

Claudius/ Ghost – John Shrapnel

Guildenstern – Peter Singh

Osric/ Second Player/ Barnardo – Ben Stott

Ophelia – Katie West

Laertes – Ashley Zhangazha

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All's Well That Ends Well (NT Live – City Screen, York, 1st October 2009)

I saw the National production of All’s Well That Ends Well in July and thought it was a fantastic production with its focus on the fairytale elements of the play.  I felt at that time it will be interesting to see how the cinema experience captures the wonderful set.  For the most the screening, as part of the ntlive season, worked really well.  I just  felt at some times the overall feel of the set didn’t always come across.  This is because the cameras have to work with a combination of close-ups and long shots which means that our gaze is more directed than it would be in the theatre.  It is not always possible to see other characters’ reactions to speeches when the camera is focused on the face of one actor, or to move our eyes to the surroundings and back to the actor and observe all the effects in the background.  The Olivier is a much bigger stage than the Lyttleton and I would have thought that it is much harder to cover as much as might be needed to give a sense of a busy atmosphere full of effects, such as the puppets and a wonderful contrasts between the light and dark moving through it. It is interesting to note that there is a technical rehearsal so what we see isn’t raw and unplanned.  I felt that it had been useful to have seen the live production first because I was able to bring that experience to my viewing in the cinema and it gave me a feel for the atmosphere and the feel of the set.     However, I do enjoy the cinema experience.  I suppose the next thing to do would be to attend the theatre on the evening of filming  to experience what the filming of the live production might feel like as a member of the audience.

Unlike the screening of Phedre, this time there was an interval, and I had been wondering how this might work in the cinema.  We were presented with a countdown on screen to make sure we were in our seats before the performance started and to ensure we weren’t getting up and down  as the performance began we were shown a live interview between  Alex Jennings and the designer, Rae Smith.  This was interesting, but Smith was trying really hard to talk about her set without giving away what would happen in the second half of the play. 

Again the experiment worked really well.  I noticed that the National Theatre’s Artistic Director, Nicholas Hytner, still refered to this being a pilot in his discussion at the start of the screening.  It is a strange experience watching theatre in a cinema.  It’s not always clear if laughter is from the audience at the theatre or in the cinema for example.  I’m still not sure if I should applaud or not.  I feel that I want to and some people did at the City screen in York where I watched the performance.  The producers are grappling with what to do before curtain up and decided to braodcast pre screening interviews including Elliot Levey (playing 1st Lord Dumaine) interviewing the director, Marianne Elliott.  This gave us a sense of  being able to peek backstage and presenting us with a view of the prompter’s corner, which I don’t think we got when watching Phedre.  Nevertheless, though still a pilot the screening of a theatre production is now here to stay and people like me will stop blogging about them as if watching live theatre at the cinema is a strange novelty. 

For me this experiment works because I have seen both the live and cinema versions.  I wouldn’t want to replace my theatre experiences with one of watching productions through a camera lens, but I do see it as an enhancement to theatre going.  I see this as another chance to see a production already experienced in the theatre.  However, the ntlive project is making the National Theatre more accessible to a larger audience and that can only be a good thing.  I don’t think it will happen, but it might have been one way I could have seen the whole of  Mother Courage, because living so far from London, it is not possible for me to book to see the whole production again at the theatre.

Further information

National Theatre Website

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Phedre (City Screen/National Theatre, 25th June 2009)


Film and Theatre are very different, and this is why it felt so strange in a cinema watching actors with bold gestures projecting their voices so the back of the stalls can hear them. The experiment, I think was a success, but only because I was always mindful that this was a live stream from a theatre, and not a cinematic version of the National Theatre production. I think a production made specifically for the cinema/DVD would be very different from a stage production and we’ll see whether this is the case with the RSC Hamlet. I found it strange that in the cinema there was no sense of the audience in the National Theatre. I felt the picture was crisp, and the set worked so well on the cinema screen. I saw the set when I went to the Antony Sher platform and in the Lyttleton it feels like a claustrophobic space, which isn’t so evident in the cinema. The blue backdrop was perfect in representing the exterior scenes. In this play, there are no comic moments, so it is a very tense two hours sat in such a hot cinema, and I felt that not having the interval worked well.

The next production to be streamed live will be All’s Well That End’s Well and that will have an interval. It will be interesting to see if all the audience can get back from the bar in time, without House managers to monitor progress of return of the audience as in the Theatre.

Do you clap at the end when you’re sat in the cinema? The actors can’t respond to you to acknowledge the applause if you do. Only a few people clapped in the cinema where I watched the film, and I must admit I was torn whether to appleaud or not.

I’m going to see Phedre live at the National soon. I think I would have preferred to have done this the other way round, but I am looking forward to seeing it really live. I shall blog about it again then.

Reviews and Previews

Mark Lawson on Phedre in the cinema
Preview – Phedre in the cinema
Michael Billington on the filming of Phedre
Phedre screening (Independent)
New Statesman on Phedre screening
Phedre in the Telegraph

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