Streaming may give theatre Lungs

Claire Foy, pictured, and Matt Smith stepped out on to a London stage to act in a socially distanced version of a hit play about how the world is going to hell in a handcart.

As a metaphor for the desperate position theatre has been put in by the coronavirus, Lungs was hard to beat.

The Old Vic hoped 1 000 people a night would pay between £10 (R212) and

£65 to watch a livestream of the pair, who had not acted together since they set the small screen alight as the young Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh in the Netflix series The Crown.

Meanwhile, just down the road, Britain’s National Theatre was streaming A Midsummer Night’s Dream with Game of Thrones star Gwendoline Christie on YouTube for free.

In normal times it would have been a sell-out with a lucrative transfer to the commercial West End all but guaranteed. Instead, the theatre was relying on donations from viewers.

Streaming may be a boon for opera, ballet and drama lovers. But with 75% of British theatres saying they may not survive the year, many are questioning how good streaming can be for theatre’s parlous financial health.

While the National Theatre’s online shows during the lockdown have been a roaring success, the viability looks a lot more shaky.

For venues that have been shuttered for three months or more, the attraction is obvious.

“Millions of people are watching us,” said Valery Gergiev, the legendary Russian conductor and head of Saint Petersburg’s Mariinsky Theatre. “Instead of 2 000 people, we have hundreds of thousands of viewers.”

And ambitious companies may be creating a new audience for themselves when theatres reopen.

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