The season opens with the National Theatre Live's Encore Series offering a selection of award-winning British theatre productions. National Theatre Live is the National Theatre’s project to broadcast world-class theatre to cinemas across the UK and internationally. In addition, there are screenings of Oscar winners ‘Son of Saul’ and ‘Ida’, which is produced by Eric Abraham, the owner and founding producer of The Fugard Theatre and which is his second Academy Award following his win for ‘Kolya’.
“Other films throughout the season provide the chance to see productions by world-class organisations such as the Royal Shakespeare Company, Bolshoi Ballet, Royal Opera House and Salzburg Festival Opera. Watch out for announcements regarding our full programme for 2017,” says Daniel Galloway, executive director of The Fugard Theatre.
The Young Vic’s ‘magnetic, electrifying, astonishingly bold’ production of Miller’s tragic masterpiece won a trio of 2014 Olivier Awards including Best Revival, Best Actor for Mark Strong and Best Director for Ivo van Hove.
The great Arthur Miller confronts the American dream in this dark and passionate tale. In Brooklyn, longshoreman Eddie Carbone welcomes his Sicilian cousins to the land of freedom. But when one of them falls for his beautiful niece, they discover that freedom comes at a price. Eddie’s jealous mistrust exposes a deep, unspeakable secret – one that drives him to commit the ultimate betrayal.
Directed by Academy Award-winner Danny Boyle, this thrilling production of the famous Gothic tale features Benedict Cumberbatch and Jonny Lee Miller alternating roles as Victor Frankenstein and his creation. The production was a sell-out hit at the National Theatre in 2011, and the broadcast has since become an international sensation, experienced by over half a million people in cinemas around the world.
Childlike in his innocence, but grotesque in form, Frankenstein’s bewildered Creature is cast out into a hostile universe by his horror-struck maker. Meeting with cruelty wherever he goes, the friendless Creature, increasingly desperate and vengeful, determines to track down his creator and strike a terrifying deal.
Academy Award nominee Benedict Cumberbatch takes on the title role of Shakespeare’s great tragedy. Directed by Lyndsey Turner and produced by Sonia Friedman Productions, the original 2015 broadcast was experienced by over half a million people worldwide.
As a country arms itself for war, a family tears itself apart. Forced to avenge his father’s death, but paralysed by the task ahead, Hamlet rages against the impossibility of his predicament, threatening both his sanity and the security of the state.
Winner of the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film at the 88th Academy Awards.
October 1944, Auschwitz-Birkenau. Saul Auslander is a Hungarian member of the Sonderkommando, the group of Jewish prisoners isolated from the camp and forced to assist the Nazis in the machinery of large-scale extermination.
While working in one of the crematoriums, Saul discovers the corpse of a boy he takes for his son. As the Sonderkommando plans a rebellion, Saul decides to carry out an impossible task: save the child’s body from the flames, find a rabbi to recite the mourner’s Kaddish and offer the boy a proper burial.
A film produced by Eric Abraham, the owner and founding producer of the Fugard Theatre and winner of the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film at the 87th Academy Awards. Aside from winning numerous awards in Poland, ‘Ida’ was selected as Best Film of 2014 by the European Film Academy and as Best Film Not in the English Language of 2014 by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA).
A black and white film directed by Paweł Pawlikowski and written by himself and Rebecca Lenkiewicz, ‘Ida’ has earned Pawlikowski his first Oscar and is the first Polish foreign language film to win the prize.
‘Ida’ stars Agata Kulesza, Dawid Ogrodnik and Agata Trzebuchowska. It is set in Poland in 1962, and is about a young woman on the verge of taking vows as a Catholic nun. Orphaned as an infant during the German occupation of World War ll, she must now meet her aunt. The former Communist state prosecutor and only surviving relative tells her that her parents were Jewish. The two women embark on a road trip into the Polish countryside to learn the fate of their family.
Helen McCrory returns to the National Theatre in Terence Rattigan’s devastating masterpiece, playing one of the greatest female roles in contemporary drama. Tom Burke also features in Carrie Cracknell’s critically acclaimed new production.
A flat in Ladbroke Grove, West London. 1952. When Hester Collyer is found by her neighbours in the aftermath of a failed suicide attempt, the story of her tempestuous affair with a former RAF pilot and the breakdown of her marriage to a High Court judge begins to emerge. With it comes a portrait of need, loneliness and long-repressed passion. Behind the fragile veneer of post-war civility burns a brutal sense of loss and longing.
Screenings take place at The Fugard Bioscope at 11am. Tickets cost R100 and can be booked through Computicket on 0861 915 8000, online at www.computicket.com or at any Shoprite Checkers outlet. Bookings can also be made at the Fugard Theatre box office on 021 461 4554.
For further information about the programme, visit www.thefugard.com
