Recorded for posterity

September 19, 2017 09:34 pm | Updated 09:34 pm IST

Since the very first screenings in India, that took place in 2011, the National Theatre Live (or NT Live) initiative has brought some of the Royal National Theatre’s best productions to the niche confines of the NCPA’s Godrej Dance Theatre. The plays are ordinarily screened live, via a satellite link, to cinema venues across the UK, but in India, they arrive a few months (sometimes even a few years) after premiering at one of the most esteemed arts venue in London’s South Bank. Danny Boyle’s Frankenstein , with Benedict Cumberbatch and Jonny Lee Miller, and a production of Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard starring Zoë Wanamaker were the first offerings to be screened in this country. Since then, the screenings have continued fairly regularly, and attract a loyal audience. One does get the sense that this demographic is not one that also patronises Indian theatre as enthusiastically, but are drawn to a plush cinematic presentation of international drama. A multi-camera setup allows NT Live performances to be captured not as a static frame seen from a fixed vantage (which is what makes most digital recordings of live entertainment pale in comparison), but via multiple perspectives, close-ups, pans and scans, that allow us to pick up the tiniest of details often not accessible even to those watching the performance live in a theatre.

It is still theatre — it’s all shot in real time and there are no edits. The actors are not romancing a notional camera, but are performing live in front of an audience. There are no second takes. So, although recorded for posterity, there is a lot of that ephemeral energy that is still visible in their turns. The hyper-realism of cinema, where one must mandatorily forget the camera that is essentially in front of each frame, is something that the stage isn’t overtly concerned by. There is a tendency these days to provide the kind of spectacle that would create a more immersive experience, but the nature of the medium itself allows for a much greater suspension of disbelief. In Boyle’s Frankenstein , there is, on occasion, the pageantry of having a locomotive arrive on stage, all pomp and circumstance, but the play’s dark themes, drawn from Mary Shelly’s gothic masterpiece, are also foregrounded metaphorically.

Dramatic panoramas

The presentation of the monster, for instance, is a sensory experience in itself, compounded with a soundscape of electronica and bass. Incubated in a giant sac, filled with a kind of amniotic fluid, he literally hatches on stage, and flaps about on the ground. There is something amphibian about his gasping, as his limbs attempt to steady an awkward gait. It is as if all five senses have miraculously come alive in a 30-year-old frame. With lucid and powerful movements, this ‘birthing’ is a feat of physical theatre, and possibly immensely gratifying to those experiencing it first hand. For us, the camera rustles up some swooping overhead shots and lingering close-ups to create a kind of dramatic panorama. Yet, however crystal clear the transfer to screen, the rush of adrenaline that is part of any live theatre experience is conspicuous by its absence, even though our expectations from Boyle’s métier are being met in many other ways.

In the movies, the monster is an uncertain creature with a square forehead who is given to monosyllabic utterances. Here, he is animated and excitable, and even given to pithy one-liners. He is a playful presence revelling in the pleasures that come with being granted an almost impromptu existence. Despite the dark gravity of some of his deeds, he is never literally a monster, there is something very disarmingly endearing about him, something that entrances us from the word ‘go’. There is a slapstick element to his demeanour and a levity to his pronouncements that take away from the dastardliness of the misshapen identity that is ultimately accorded to him by the world. He strikes us as someone perfectly able to be loved and not be forsaken. In a world of moral dichotomies, it is the doctor with his weak-willed vacillating, and narcissism, who appears to have been put forward as the real bad guy. The monster almost provides a moral fulcrum to the proceedings with his overpowering need to belong, to be assimilated, to be blessed with reason. What makes him a monster is not looking like a stitched-up cadaver but his response to what he considers to be the intransigence of society. Sometimes in the theatre, complex psychological portraits can be affected with layers of ambiguity and contradiction that only add to the richness of characterisation. This we can say, was not lost in translation from stage to screen. Perhaps, the cameras even helped in creating a more intimate connection with the principals (Cumberbatch and Miller alternated the parts of the monster and Dr. Victor Frankenstein in separate shows).

Enthralling theatre

Last month, it was Tony Kushner’s Angels in America that came to us in two parts, running into more than six hours of delectable viewing. The production, a 25thanniversary revival of the 1992 masterpiece, is directed by Marianne Elliott and the all-star cast features Andrew Garfield, a household name in India, and a host of other worthies like Nathan Lane and Russell Tovey.

The mini-series based on the play, directed by Mike Nichols, has been telecast in India, so the material’s preoccupations with AIDS and homosexuality in Reagan’s America was perhaps not entirely unfamiliar to those in the audience. Boyle being an auteur of the cinema, may have had some hand in the illusory nature of Frankenstein’s presentation. In Elliott’s presentation of a great text, the videography doesn’t take away from the theatricality of the production. Its gently rotating arenas of performance are elegantly lit, and they fade in and out as characters’ lives are illuminated and obscured.

The actors hold us with their words and their attitudes, and the authenticity of their work, with the crutches of spectacle wholly absent. One can be thankful for that.

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