Tags:
Journalism of Courage
Phedre is an everyday story of an ancient Greek royal family. A queen,thinking her husband Theseus is dead,reveals her incestuous love for her stepson,Hippolytus,who prefers the love of a young woman. But Theseus returns and Phèdre tries to protect her reputation by suggesting that Hippolytus has raped her.
The drama ends in the deaths of Hippolytus and Phèdre. This is not easy to absorb in a single instalment,especially as it was written in iambic pentameters in 1677 by a French playwright,Jean Racine,and is played in two hours without an interval. Even when performed in a version by such a fine English poet as Ted Hughes,the play sounds only slightly less forbidding.
Nicholas Hytner,director of the National Theatre and of Phèdre,cannot think of a play that has reached a larger audience. The great amphitheatre at Epidaurus,south-west of Athens,where Euripidess original version of Phèdre would surely have played in the 3rd century BC,and which this production will visit on July 10th and 11th,holds a mere 12,000 or so.
The production opened earlier this month to generally excellent reviews. The lead is played by a British film star,Helen Mirren,the cast is uniformly excellent and Mr Hytners work is first rate,as is Bob Crowleys set. It is very promising,but to encourage the thousands to come back for more,it has to be good.
The transmission from the Lyttelton theatre on the south bank of the Thames can be received in cinemas that have a digital projector and a satellite dish. The technology is thoroughly tested,and has been proved successful by the Metropolitan Opera in New York,and by Covent Garden and Glyndebourne in England. The Mets operatic repertoire now reaches more than 850 screens in 30 countries. But opera is performed in a universal language. To draw a real crowd for a Greek tragedy is a more ambitious project.
It will go out live. Mr Hytner decided that the cinema audience must feel that it is in a theatre watching a performance that is ephemeral,happening now,and then gone for ever. On the night,the lights will be adjusted in the theatre and the cameras given pride of place,but the director insists that he is not making a film: I think well be getting a theatre audience, he says. Many of the cinemas are art houses,which have been helped to convert to digital projectors by the British Film Council. Despite the size of the audience,the transmission will be shown at a loss and the Arts Council is subsidising the innovation.
Mr Hytners cast is led by Ms Mirren,a compelling stage actress who has taken to the cinema like a queen to her throne. She originally suggested to Mr Hytner that she play Phèdre at the National. When Mr Hytner decided a year ago that the theatre should follow opera into live transmissions,he thought the presence of a film star could only help to make a splash. The idea needs a strong start because this is only the beginning. Further transmissions are planned in the autumn and winter,and they include plays by Shakespeare and Alan Bennett.
The Economist Newspaper Limited 2009
