Yesterday evening I had the privilege of seeing Helen Mirren as Phèdre. How unlike the home life of our own dear Queen!

I saw the performance live on stage at the National Theatre on London’s South Bank, and managed to see both her face close up, and a panoramic view of the whole stage. Yet my seat was neither front row of the Stalls, nor in the Upper Circle – it was a comfortable armchair in The Everyman, a small cinema just a ten-minute bus ride from my home in north London.

This was courtesy of NT Live, a new project, which broadcasts live theatre performances in high definition all around the world. The advantages of this are as plain as the stage on your screen. If you live outside London, or outside England – and most people do – or the play is sold out, or you cannot get to the National easily, you can still see a live performance. At £10 a ticket, it is also cheaper than usual (apart from the limited Travelex deals).

Is it the same as being there, though, or is it just like a rather stagey film? Not the latter, certainly, although not quite the former. It isn’t like a film at all. You know you are witnessing a live performance; that it is not the same as last night’s or tomorrow night’s; that something could go wrong. This is the immediacy of the theatre, which I love and which always gives it the edge over cinema. Theatre rules apply, if unspoken: mobile phones off, no latecomers, no chatting, snogging, slurping (even of drinks) and definitely no popcorn. You concentrate harder with a play, as there are none of those interludes – sweeping panoramas, stagecoaches dashing through muddy roads - where the brain can rest. (Phèdre, more than most plays, is short on downtime.) It isn’t quite like being there, however; the atmosphere is not as intense, and the applause, from such a small audience, seemed unduly restrained.

There is nothing new under the sun, as I am not the first to point out. Live theatre broadcasts are old hat – or should that be vieux chapeau? From the no-longer-so-newfangled Wikipedia:

Théâtrophone ("the theatre phone") was a telephonic distribution system that allowed the subscribers to listen to opera and theatre performances over the telephone lines. The théâtrophone evolved from a Clément Ader invention, which was first demonstrated in 1881, in Paris. Subsequently, in 1890, the invention was commercialized by Compagnie du Théâtrophone, which continued to operate till 1932.

[…]

In a note dated 11 November 1881, Victor Hugo describes his first experience of théâtrophone as pleasant.

In 1884, the King Luís I of Portugal decided to use the system, when he couldn't attend an opera in person. The director of the Edison Gower Bell Company, who was responsible for this théatrophone installation was later awarded the Military Order of Christ.

The Théâtrophone technology was made available in Belgium in 1884, and in Lisbon in 1885. In Sweden, the first telephone transmission of an opera performance took place in Stockholm in May 1887. The British writer Ouida describes a female character in the novel Massarenes (1897) as "A modern woman of the world. As costly as an ironclad and as complicated as theatrophone."

Apart from that, Mrs Lincoln, how was the play? That’s for another post, but I bet Abraham was kicking himself that Live Theatre Broadcasts hadn’t been invented yet.