NATIONAL THEATRE PRODUCTION OF PHÈDRE COMES TO HUDSON
Carole Osterink
ccSCOOP Editor
06-22-09 – 12:35 a.m. – National Theatre’s production of Phèdre starring Helen Mirren officially opened on June 11. If you were in London and wanted to buy tickets to the performance, you would be limited to buying only four. But if you’re in Hudson on June 25 or 28, you’re in luck. You can see Helen Mirren as Phèdre, and there is no limit on the number of friends you can bring with you.
June 25 marks the inauguration of NT Live. On that day, the stage performance at the Royal National Theatre in London will be filmed live in high definition and broadcast via satellite to movie theaters and performing arts venues throughout the UK and Europe and on a time-delay basis to sites in the United States, including Time & Space Limited in Hudson. The live transmission is at 7 p.m. on Thursday, June 25. There is an encore showing on Sunday, June 28, at 2 p.m.
The translation of Racine’s tragedy is by the late Ted Hughes, at one time Britain’s poet laureate. Dominic Cooper (Mamma Mia! and the original History Boys) plays Hippolytus, Phèdre’s stepson and the object of her incestuous passion.
Michael Coveney, reviewing the production for The Independent, called it “a very sedate version of a passionate tragedy.” Matt Wolf, in the New York Times, describes Mirren “a slow-burning Phèdre.” Reviewing the opening night performance, Charles Spencer said in the Telegraph, “What’s fatally lacking is a sense of tragic abandonment, the feeling that a great actress is laying everything she has before us, mind, heart, soul and guts. . . . The performance will grow if [Mirren] dares more, exposes more, digs deeper.” You can have a chance to see if she, in two weeks' time, succeeds in doing that.
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Photo by Catherine Ashmore |
Tickets are $22 for adults and $15 for children under 12. For more information call 518-822-8448, email fyi@timeandspace.org, or visit www.timeandspace.org. The performance runs for two hours with no intermission.
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