A LIVE PERFORMANCE IN KETTERING

Last Thursday I had a truly amazing theatrical experience. In Kettering.

Do you know Kettering? Have you heard of the place? It is not on the UK tourist trail and its only claim to fame is that it was once very important in the footwear industry. It’s a bit of a nothing place is Kettering. But it has an Odeon cinema.

So what? There are plenty of Odeon cinemas scattered around the country. What is special about this Odeon is that last Thursday, 22 April 2010, it showed a live production of Alan Bennett’s play, The Habit of Art. Yes, live. By some (to me) utterly mysterious technical process I watched a play that was being performed then, simultaneously, at the National Theatre, London. It was transmitted through the aether to one of the Kettering Odeon’s several screens in High Definition. You buy a ticket for £10 and for this paltry sum you see an utterly flawless live performance in a seat that is better, in terms of vision, than any live theatre I have ever been to. In terms of seat comfort I would only mention the strange circular devices at the end of the seat arms that exist only to hold cartons of drink and to cause some discomfort to one’s elbows which inevitably find their way into them. Like the £10, a small price to pay for something as delightful as the live performance of this play.

There was an introduction by Emma Freud, witty and informative. She stood outside the National Theatre with the Thames behind her and told us what was going to happen next. She introduced director, Nicholas Hytner, who told us more about this development in theatre-going. We saw a filmed interview with Alan Bennett. Then we saw the audience, live and obviously aware that there were cameras about the place. Emma Freud told us that they were looking rather ‘scruffy’ which seemed unkind if true. Somehow it made someone in the Kettering Odeon feel that they were part of that same audience. We, of course, were far from being scruffy - it was a Big Night Out for us. Then the play started.

My thoughts were with the cast whose brief was simply that they had to perform flawlessly. The camera was there to see everything. They stood up to the test superbly. The technique somehow avoided it seeming like a film experience. It was entirely theatrical. One saw and heard the other audience, the scruffy one. It was visually and acoustically perfect. Did you ever see the early attempts to film and transmit on TV live opera? One was always aware of the proscenium arch; one had only one view and that was the view of what was happening within the arch. It clunked. It clunked with the sound of performers’ feet clunking about the stage and it clunked in terms of the TV direction, which was pretty much non-existent as far as I could tell. Well, this show in the Odeon, Kettering did not clunk at all, not for even one micro-second.

The play itself? It’s fine. I shall not attempt to review it. That is not the intent of this piece. Suffice it to say that it was fine.

My dears, my spirits soar at the thought of what this experience could lead to. On Friday of this week I am to go to London to see a play. I will buy a train ticket (Oh yes, your blogger does not live in London) that will not cost me peanuts. I will either need to prevail upon the goodwill of friends to take me to the railway station and collect me later, much later, in the day, or I will have to take taxis and the return cost of that will be around £50. Availability of car parking at the station is never good and cannot be relied upon. The play I have already bought my ticket to see has been horribly reviewed. No, I won’t mention it by name but it appears in my most favourite of London theatres. I am verging on making the decision to abandon my visit.

Where and why do my spirits soar? They soar because of what this brilliant experiment of the National Theatre means to us all. It means that it may one day not be quite so bad being a provincial! Other theatres could do this. Other theatres in other countries could do this. It means that live theatre could be universal.

The National Theatre has obviously conquered the technical difficulties which must have been huge and very costly but now the breakthrough has been achieved the sky must be the limit. Actually, now I think about it, the point is that the sky is no longer the limit. It could mean that a theatre needs only to present a small number of performances. People always say that there is nothing quite like a live performance and that has always meant a visit to a theatre; it will take time for them to realise that what is going to be on offer very soon is a live performance but in your very own local Odeon where traditionally one does not see live performances.

Of course, the modestly produced literature available to the audience of which I was a member did include a begging message that merged the financial needs of the National Theatre and the project called NT Live which brought my experience to me in Kettering – and asked for money. The National Theatre needing money? We are well used to that but NT Live?

You know, Kettering wasn’t the only town to have been blessed with this. The performance was shown simultaneously all over the world, from the USA around to Australia. I don’t have the figures but the total number of people viewing and paying their equivalents of £10 must have run into hundreds of thousands. NT Live has cracked the financial straitjacket that has always bedevilled theatre, the fact that theatres have limited capacities. I find it hard to believe that this project now needs my coin to clink into the can. It seems to me that this is a licence to print money and it is all the more wonderful for that. Actually, I believe that this technology will make millions and might even take ambitious and successful arts bodies right out of the begging bowl world, perhaps make a few fortunes for the individuals behind it and, one hopes sincerely, for the actors and directors who make it possible.

On Monday 28 June I shall be attending a live performance of London Assurance by Dion Boucicault, at my local Odeon. I’ve seen the play before and I don’t like it but such is my enthusiasm for this new world that I will happily give it another go. My ticket was bought as I left the performance. How wise of the cinema to keep the box office open after the show – many don’t you know.