Shakespeare and Pick 'n' Mix: Live Theatre at the Cinema
There’s a number of reasons a trip to the theatre has not been on the cards during my ME flare, not just the obvious lack of energy to get myself there. Firstly there’s the fact that a lot of theatres, including Edinburgh’s King’s Theatre (a favourite of mine) are older buildings and tend to have quite small seats with little leg room. Now at 5’6” this was never a huge issue for me before but thanks to ME, leg pain has become something I need to consider when going anywhere. I need to be able to change seating position (often!) and ideally have my legs raised, not something considered by architects at the turn of the last century unfortunately.
As well as fidgety and painful legs, I had become a lot more sensitive to my environment where loud noises, bright lights or busy crowds could really overwhelm me and have been known to result in me sitting with my eyes tight shut and covering my ears before quickly (or as quickly as my painful legs and fatigued body would let me!) exiting to find a quieter spot to recover.
So all in all a trip to the theatre has not been high on my to do list for quite some time.
More recently I had been managing to get to the cinema every now and then, selecting films that were less likely to be particularly loud and action packed, going midweek when it was likely to be much quieter and picking a cinema that had parking right outside and most importantly big, comfy, recliner chairs which meant that it become a more manageable experience for me and my dodgy legs.
Even then there were a couple of times that the trailers, which always seem to be much louder, brighter and fast-paced, were too much and I learnt that arriving a little later and missing those was better (any excuse for being late, right).
Whilst this was great, I still fancied a trip to the theatre. A month or two ago I had been fortunate enough to make it along to a local theatre group production of Carousel at the Churchill Theatre. A friend of mine was in the cast and so I really wanted to push myself to make it. I had front row seats which not only provided plenty of leg room but meant all I saw was the stage and not all the audience sat behind me. I could wait till enough people left before standing and making my own way out at my speed and whilst it is a good sized theatre it is much smaller than a lot of others in the city so a good option for me all round. I thoroughly enjoyed the night, not just because the show was great and it was fabulous seeing my friend perform but because I’d made it back to the theatre. Hurrah!
I had a look at what else was on but the same concerns raised their heads, some venues were too difficult to get to, too big and filled with crowds, small cramped seating or loud, busy productions and overall I just didn’t feel it was something I could manage yet.
Then I saw an advert for something I had thought about before but never tried; live theatre streamed into the cinema.
I suggested it to a friend and we decided to go along and give it a go. I wasn’t really sure what to expect, would it capture the production? how would the sound quality be? would we be able to see all the things happening on the stage properly? would it be an obvious second rate experience?
As it turned out I really think we got a lot of the best of both worlds. Nothing will of course replace the feeling of sitting in a theatre and watching a live performance but this was a genuinely enjoyable experience and most importantly for me, one that I could easily manage.
We had picked a showing of The Winter’s Tale from Branaghtheatre.live, starring, you guessed it, Kenneth Branagh. Sir Kenneth was joined on stage by Dame Judi Dench and other familiar faces including Miranda Raison and Tom Bateman.
As well as fabulously comfy recliners, easy access parking and a (disappointingly) quiet audience, watching theatre at the cinema had other benefits. Theatre is generally quieter than cinema so there was no concerns about being overwhelmed by busy action scenes or explosions, this was Shakespeare not Spielberg after all and with an interval I even had a break where I could stretch my legs.
Before the play started the screen showed an aerial view of the audience. No trailers! Another bonus!! As the play was about to begin a short countdown appeared, the camera changed and we saw the curtain rising.
The camera work was fantastic. At the beginning and end you were raised just about the audience in the stalls, taking in the feeling of being part of the audience and during the performance itself you were fully immersed in the action and the actors. With multiple camera views you were treated to full views of the stage, which helped you fully appreciated the set design and experience the scene changes and larger group performances such as the dancing in the festival scene or the wonderfully atmospheric final scene. But you were also able to get right up close to the actors and experience their performance in a way I don’t think the audience in the theatre would necessarily be able to do. There was no worrying about sitting behind someone tall or near a dreaded pillar! You saw the best view for each scene and the sound quality was excellent. You could tell that careful direction had been given to ensure the cinema audience’s experience took them close in to the performance without letting them forget this was theatre. There was never an attempt to make this feel like a movie, this was most definitely theatre. It worked really well and I didn’t feel like I lost anything in seeing the play this way. It wasn’t a poorer experience, simply a different one.
And despite knowing it was live theatre, my friend and I completely forgot about the fact that there would be an interval!. Something I’ve not experienced in the cinema in a very long time but was actually rather nice. As I mentioned I got to stretch my legs but I also got to stock up on snacks, I can tell you that Shakespeare with a bit of pick ‘n’ mix really is a pretty good combination. Even more importantly, if you can believe there’s such a thing, my friend and I got to chat about the first act as you would in the theatre and it made our night out much more sociable than a standard trip to the cinema. Another treat was the short clip shown at the end of the interval of Rob Brydon reading the Bernard Levin poem, “You’re quoting Shakespeare”. This little extra touch, along with the final camera shot returning us to our virtual seats in the middle of the stalls and seeing the people clap and react to the play, really added to the evening and showed how you could experience new and additional aspects to the traditional theatre experience whilst still valuing and acknowledging what it is to be part of the real audience.
So, would I go again? Yes! I will definitely be looking out for more shows like this. It will creates the opportunity of seeing plays I would never otherwise get to see and makes theatre trips much more accessible and manageable for me right now. I don’t see it as something that will replace my love of going to the theatre but instead it creates another type of night out, one that combines the comfort of leather recliners and pick ‘n’ mix with unobstructed views of live performances and wonderful stage craft. Who can say no to that!