Old Vic's The Crucible hits cinema screens from tonight
The Old Vic's acclaimed recent revival of Arthur Miller's The Crucible will be broadcast to cinemas this evening and on Sunday 7 December 2014.
Directed by Yaël Farber and starring Richard Armitage and Anna Madeley as John and Elizabeth Proctor, the production will be screened in over 350 cinemas across the UK in partnership with DigitalTheatre and CinemaLive.
Speaking at a premiere screening of the production at the May Fair Hotel on Tuesday, Armitage described his feelings towards capturing theatre for the screen said: "It's going to be thrilling to see how they've cut the film together, the choices of close-up and the choices of scenes… I love this idea of this middle ground, as film more into a digital, technical world and theatre remains theatre, there is room for something a bit different."
Farber followed on from this saying: "We're not trying to make a film, we're trying to capture this elusive thing that theatre is… Theatre's such an elusive creature and we love it because it dies in the very moment that we see it, so to try and preserve it feels like a kind of taxidermy, but there is an art, there's some kind of middle ground that can be achieved where you bring some kind of approximation and it becomes it own creature, something very beautiful."
Anna Madeley praised DigitalTheatre's sensitivity when approaching the filming of the production. "When [DigitalTheatre] came to talk to us about filming, they basically said they don't want to change anything about the show. It's literally they were going to put cameras into the auditorium and capture what we did. So, bar wearing a microphone on a wire, nothing changed for us, so I really enjoyed it and am intrigued to see what it's like."
Arthur Miller's play was inspired by the actions of The House Committee on Un-American Activities of the McCarthy era, in front of which the playwright was invited to give evidence.
Armitage told me that working with Farber was "life changing", adding "I hit my middle age and I feel like I've found a director that changed the way I worked and I really hope we can do something else together. We're putting our heads together and having a really good think about what we can do next."
