NT Live: The Audience – Review

Last night I was felt both fortunate and confused after watching the National Theatre Live production: The Audience. I was fortunate enough to marvel at the enormous success of the production but a little confused by watching a live theatre play at a cinema. I constantly forgot that what I was watching was a play and not a film (or was it?) but intermission eventually set me straight. Last Thursday night this particular National Theatre production was broadcast to over 80, 000 in cinemas worldwide and broke box office records by achieving a total audience of more than 110, 000. Phenomenal stuff really.

The play’s title The Audience refers to the extremely private weekly meeting between the Queen Elizabeth II and the twelve Prime Ministers that she seen throughout her sixty year reign. Without adhering to a chronological narrative, the production imagines the happenings within these clandestine meetings as a dialogue takes place between the two governing systems. These meetings are intimate, icy, awkward, humorous and always curious.

On a couple of occasions the mighty men of British power (in particular Gordon Brown and John Major) end up in their own therapy session with the Queen Mother as they contemplate their identities and pour out their complexities. As these politicians come and go by Buckingham Palace, Her Majesty remains the only constant figure of British authority which is portrayed via a very young Elizabeth as an extremely lonely and often frustrating burden to bear.

The play was directed by Stephen Daldry and written by Peter Morgan who also wrote the play Frost/Nixon (which was adapted into an Academy Award-nominated film) and also worked with lead actor Dame Helen Mirren in the The Queen. Each of the support cast offer a strong performance and provide the variety of characters that converse, challenge and confide in the constancy of the Queen of England. Those with even the remotest interest in the British monarchy should go and see this production, as should those who are affectionate toward the conflicted and often baffling world of political dialogue.

NT Live: The Audience is released 11 July around New Zealand

Reviewed by Ben Blackman

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