Unless one lives in New York or London, often the best theater is just too far away. Fortunately, there is National Theatre Live, an initiative following in the footsteps of New York’s Metropolitan Opera to broadcast live performances from London’s famed National Theatre to cinemas worldwide. NT Live continues the experiment in its third season with John Hodge’s Collaborators. The play is being shown locally at the Angelika Film Centers (Dallas and Plano), and a one-time only screening at The Modern in Ft.Worth.

NT Artistic Director Nicholas Hytner (film credits: The Crucible, and The Madness of King George) helms John Hodge’s play that centers on an invented and secret working relationship between Joseph Stalin and the novelist/playwright Mikhail Bulgakov (The Master and Margarita). Hodge, of course, is the screenwriter behind edgy, forward-thinking films such as for Trainspotting, Shallow Grave and The Beach.

So, there is a bit of poetic irony involved in a director and writer primarily known for movies fashioning a stage play about a writer and dictator that will gain its biggest audience in movie theaters around the world. The play itself is a fantastical, historical romp through a very particular place and time (Moscow, 1938) with a couple of seemingly non-theatrical protagonists: Stalin and Bulgakov. Kudos to Simon Russell Beale who infuses bushels of personality, humor and life into the Soviet dictator. Alex Jennings plays the writer with an appropriate amount of paranoid polish.

Hodge is able to create some nice, distinctly dark Russian attitude filtered through a dry English sensibility in his “bleak and funny satire.” Hytner’s direction favors a feverish pace with ultra-quick scene changes, and a staging in the round that adds to the surveillance-state nature of the material.

The primary question is does a filmed play work as a theatrical production (as intended), or is it some pale version of something that is neither? The quality of the acting, direction, production value, etc. cannot be questioned; however, no matter how good those things are it is still not like attending a live play. A cinema, no matter how nice, is still just a movie theater: the omnipresent sounds (and smells) of crackling snacks, feet shuffling, whispering (regrettably something that is not particular to movies these days), the passive experience of staring at a screen, and artificial audio to name a few house of celluloid characteristics.

Thankfully, it does not pretend to be a movie. It desperately wants to be a play (and is for the audiences in attendance inLondon), but one is limited by the above factors and crucially the camera angles, and the presence and “availability” of all the actors on the stage, not just the ones speaking.

Who should see a broadcast play from the National Theatre? Those wanting to be in the loop of quality theater from across the pond, and theater folks who want a wider exposure to actors, directors, and plays than are available locally should check it out. If the audience (a robust, half-full house) at the showing I attended are any indication then it seems those who normally seek out Angelika’s foreign fare, academics specializing in Bulgakov, and those who have been to the National Theatre are also in the select demographic. A chance to see a great play, for a decent price, and one that is not holiday-themed might just be worth it.

Image: Alex Jennings (Mikhail Bulgakov) and Simon Russell Beale (Joseph Stalin) (Credit: Johan Persson)