Live theatre arrives in English cinemas

posted by HowardBHaas on July 20, 2010 at 3:45 pm

Like Opera in the U.S., live theatre is coming to British cinemas and has been rather successful.

When the National Theatre unveiled plans to film productions and relay them live by satellite to cinemas in Britain and 21 other countries, I was sceptical. I feared the results would seem excessively stagy and lack the excitement of watching actors in the flesh.

How wrong I was. The Esher Odeon was almost packed, and the performance of Dion Boucicault’s hilarious 19th-century comedy London Assurance was as entertaining on screen as it had been in the theatre. What’s more, there was a real sense of the live event about it. The cinema audience actually clapped at the end, and there was a sense of shared laughter and genuine community one rarely experiences at the flicks.

Read more in the Telegraph

Comments (3)

moviebuff82
moviebuff82 on July 20, 2010 at 8:30 pm

My local AMC in Rockaway has been doing this for nearly 2 years. When it first started, it used the digital 2k preshow projectors resulting in a DVD quality picture. Now that AMC has gotten 4k projection in three of its screens, they can use one to show an HD live event such as the Met Opera series or prerecorded shows like Celine Dion’s concert movie.

Al Alvarez
Al Alvarez on July 21, 2010 at 9:12 pm

British cinemas have been running digital live opera for years, way before AMC installed digital projectors. This is live theatre.

qavishahzad
qavishahzad on July 23, 2010 at 10:29 am

I lived in Wenatchee briefly in 1975, and they only had two or three theatres at the time…sounds like things

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