In 2010, I attended a digital presentation of Shakespeare’s Hamlet at The Carnegie in Covington. It came from London’s National Theatre and starred British actor Rory Kinnear. It was my first experience with “event cinema.” Around the same time, New York City’s Metropolitan Opera made news with HD transmissions of its Saturday afternoon performances to cineplexes across America. Such presentations actually whetted appetites for regional theaters and opera companies.
I recently connected with Jonathan Ross, executive director of the Event Cinema Association (ECA). He cited the Met broadcasts as an early catalyst. “Most opera fans can’t get to New York on a regular basis, much less afford a good ticket to see the Met Opera in person,” he said. “So event cinema has, in a sense, democratized the public’s access and ability to experience a vast range of entertainment content, from live opera to plays and musical theater.”
Event cinema has grown by 500 percent over the past five years. By 2019, it’s expected to be a $1 billion worldwide industry. (Most theaters in North America have gone digital, moving away from 35mm projection. That’s opened the door for more event cinema, live or pre-recorded.)
Two years ago, I saw the musical Billy Elliot presented digitally at Cinemark Oakley Station. Based on a British movie from 2000, the story about an adolescent boy who yearns to be a ballet dancer is set in a rough coal-mining town in Northern England. The characters speak and sing with dense accents that are often impenetrable onstage. On screen, however, dialogue and lyrics came through clearly.
Fast forward to now: ECA’s Ross said there are often as many as 10 productions monthly by Fathom Events, the largest distributor. “More and more arts organizations, theaters, museums and other cultural institutions see the value of bringing their performances and collections to movie screens where patrons can experience their content on the ‘big screen’ with unparalleled audio and visual quality,” he said.
A related trend in recent years has been network television presentations of live productions of well-known musicals. NBC, for example, has broadcast The Sound of Music, Peter Pan, The Wiz and, earlier this month, Hairspray. These have been positively received, but I believe they fall short of the impact of seeing shows at a cineplex.
Theater is increasingly available, both plays and musicals. Earlier this fall, London’s National Theatre offered encore presentations of War Horse and Benedict Cumberbatch in Hamlet. Just last week, the National’s production of Harold Pinter’s No Man’s Land with stage and screen luminaries Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart showed up, a production that received ecstatic reviews during a sold-out limited run on Broadway a year ago. And on Jan. 8 at the Kenwood Theatre, Kenneth Branagh will perform in John Osborne’s 1957 play The Entertainer.
The phenomenon is encompassing more broadly popular works, too. A performance of Disney’s Newsies: The Broadway Musical, captured live at the Hollywood Pantages Theatre earlier in 2016, will be on view in select local movie theaters on Feb. 16, 18 and 22. Admissions are typically around $20, considerably less than tickets for Broadway shows or even touring productions at Cincinnati’s Aronoff Center.
“Beyond being present for the event itself, we believe that the cinema is the ideal environment best suited to seeing and hearing events,” Ross said. “It is that communal and shared experience of witnessing something astounding with other people that cannot be replicated in the home.”
This isn’t a reason to stop seeing live theater on local stages. But event cinema offers the opportunity to expand your artistic horizons by seeing outstanding theatrical productions that you can’t get to — or afford — in New York City, London and beyond.
To stay on top of what’s being distributed, check the website stageandstream.com, an independent online resource providing advance notice about plays, musicals and other events at local cinemas, on network television and streaming.
CONTACT RICK PENDER: rpender@citybeat.com
This article appears in Dec 21-28, 2016.
