N.T. LIVE - “FRANKENSTEIN”

I’ve written before about “N.T. Live” (see http://m-a-w-h.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/nt-live-travelling-light.html), so it really shouldn’t need any further introduction. However, as it would be an act of supreme arrogance to assume that anyone ever remembers a single word that I put down in these pages, I should just take a moment to remind you that it involves a trip to the cinema to see plays beamed live (or, occasionally “as live” if it’s a show from another evening) direct from the London stage so that we oiks (my term) in the provinces, and, more importantly for the London stage, I suppose, around the whole world, get a chance to see the “hottest shows in town”.

There is also the small matter of, perhaps, posterity, in that these extraordinary shows and performances by actors at the height of their powers get to be preserved for future generations to enjoy, in a way that was denied to previous generations. The history books might tell us, in awestruck terms, about Olivier’s “definitive” Hamlet, but nobody is able to actually see it, whereas, if he was performing it now, we could see it in all its glory, along with all the staging and the lighting and the sound effects, and continue to do so for years to come.

In the case of the latest one which we attended a couple of nights ago, this was the award winning and much admired production of “Frankenstein” as directed by Danny Boyle from last year, and starring Benedict Cumberbatch and that bloke with the name that, for some reason, I find even more impossible to remember, Jonny Lee Miller, the recording of which was dusted off and given another airing due to there being “much popular demand” as the saying goes.

These days, when it comes to the “big” shows, there’s just a chance that if you’ve missed it, then you quite possibly haven’t really missed it, which can only be a great thing for theatre and a great thing for audiences too, who can’t always make it to London, and even if they can, can’t get seats for these “sell out” shows. Mind you, it’s sometimes difficult enough to get tickets for these “sell out” screenings, too, as they have become enormously popular amongst the theatre-going public, at least in this part of the world.

Well, it was, to a certain extent, supposed to be the “hottest ticket in town” at least for that kind of thing on that particular day, and, through the grace of good planning and persistence (not by me) three months earlier, we did actually have a handful of them and so our places in the auditorium were assured.

It’s just a pity I woke up fifteen hours earlier completely exhausted, and fretting over the small fact that circumstances seemed to have been unfolding all week that seemed to be making it more and more unlikely that I would actually be able to go.

There was also the tricky little matter that, for some strange reason that seems to be happening rather a lot recently, I kept on forgetting that it was actually on, and had to keep reminding myself that I would have to smarten myself up, put on a fresh new outfit, and drive to the city for the evening once I’d got the tricky matter of another wretched day of trying to produce artwork under very trying circumstances had been got out of the way, and trusting to the fact that my mother’s latest “episode” didn’t explode into even more unavoidable chaos and put the kibosh on any or all of my plans.

So it was that, with my chin scraped and some of my skin vaguely scrubbed, and the remnants of my hair combed, I put on my third best bib and tucker and, just after 5.00pm, I got into the car and pointed it in the vague direction of the Metropolis, hoping that the traffic would be favourable and the labyrinth of streets around where I hoped to be parking would be kind to me and I would not end up with me getting lost and angry and, horror of horrors, late…

Although “late” proved to be unlikely when we actually looked at the tickets over a meal at the “Cornerhouse” as, despite the “live” showings always having been at seven o’clock, this one actually started at eight and we ended up having “time to kill” as the saying goes.

But then that worked to our advantage too as we were going along with a friend of the beloved, and that meant that we had more time to converse and I had another of life’s opportunities to involve myself in idle chat with someone new to me, which is always terrifying, but I really need the practice and, happily, I didn’t drive home later on thinking I’d been an utter pillock for the whole evening (for once), despite not having had enough ready cash on me after a forgotten trip to the supermarket at the weekend had cleaned me out and, since then, I’d not had an opportunity to visit a cashpoint…

There was a certain amount that was unknowable about the play itself, too. After all, I had managed to avoid reading any “spoilers” over these past few months, so that, other than the fact that the leads were supposed to be superb, and they had swapped the roles of “creature” and “creator” throughout the run, I knew very little about what to expect.

So, just before 8.00pm, we took our seats and the show began with the slightest of niggles. I can never understand why marketing people feel the need to run an advertisement for the very thing that you’ve already come to see. I would have thought that the one group of people who are likely to know about “National Theatre Live” are the people who have already paid to come and see it, but maybe that’s just me… After that we had a short introduction filmed that afternoon plugging the next season, and mentioning the (yawn!) London Olympics (they’re in London this year, doncha know...?), and a short “behind the scenes” bit before we finally got stuck into the actual play.

So... Was it going to be an out-and-out horror story, or something resembling a discourse on what it is to be human…?

We had chosen the option with Mr Cumberbatch at his most gentlemanly sinister as the version that we preferred to see, which meant a quite lengthy, rather bizarre, disturbing and quite breathtaking opening sequence showing the birth of the monster in which he doesn’t actually feature all that much. I did wonder for a second whether it was all going to be like this, a touch of “performance art”, or the Fringe in the West End, but it soon settled down to be a quite mesmerising, skillfully performed, astonishingly designed and stunningly staged piece of extraordinary theatre, which somehow manages to hit all the beats of the original source material and yet has something to say about modern science, religion, life, death, love and hate, and what it is to be human, and also what it is not to be. After watching it, you might very well end up asking just who the real “monsters” really are…

All this without an interval, too…

As we drove home, I did wonder how different the play might actually have been featuring the “opposite” performances, although you could argue that the creature and the creator are not opposites at all, just facets of the same flawed personality, and representations of the inherent dangers in blindly pursuing a scientific idea without giving any thought to the consequences.

Maybe they’ll put both versions on the DVD release, if that ever happens… Are you listening N.T. Live..?

Anyway, as you might by now have gathered, (and hopefully without giving away too many spoilers), I rather liked it. In fact I would go as far as to say that I really can’t recommend it highly enough. Go and see it if you get the chance, it really is an astonishingly good piece of theatre, even if it is only now available on a cinema screen somewhere near you...