Prospect recommends: Phèdre

Since she last appeared nearly six years ago at the National Theatre in Eugene O’Neill’s Mourning Becomes Electra, Helen Mirren has accepted a damehood and played the Queen on screen, so she needs no prompting in the regal department as she takes on Racine’s doomed monarch, frying to death in the heat of an incestuous passion.

History will be made next week, on 25th June, when the production—which also stars Margaret Tyzack as the old nurse Oenone and Dominic Cooper (of The History Boys and Mamma Mia!) as Hippolytus, the object of Mirren’s tragic desire—goes out live on cinema screens nationwide. Live performances have already been transmitted by the Metropolitan Opera in New York, and our own Royal Opera House, but this is a theatre first, with six high definition cameras roaming the NT’s Lyttelton auditorium and director Hytner sitting in the OB van calling the shots.  All cinema tickets are priced at £10 in arts centres and independent picture houses from Bath to Bradford, Guildford to Galashiels, and the idea is not to “film” a production, but to broadcast a live event, the first of four such occasions in a pilot season sponsored by Coutts.

Michael Coveney is a theatre critic for whatsonstage.com. This recommendation can also be read in the June edition of Prospect;for subscriptions please visit our website.

Phèdre By Jean Racine, trans Ted Hughes, dir Nicholas Hytner. National Theatre from 4th June, 020 7452 3000