Flying the flag for live shows (From This is Hampshire)

Flying the flag for live shows

2:01pm Friday 5th February 2010

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By Lorelei Reddin »

theatre is dead and all us luvvies are corpses, apparently. Australian commentator Guy Rundle has told us this week that TV and film have finally killed off the theatre.

The emergence of technology, he believes, has left the art of the stage as a mix of subsidised events, non-commercial avant-gardes and occasional large spectacles, most of them musicals based on movies.

But I beg to differ.

We’ve heard this all before of course.

The birth of cinema was supposed to herald the death of theatre.

The launch of TV would kill them both. And that’s before all these clever new technologies we have that allow us to watch whatever we want whenever and wherever we are.

But I believe they can all sit happily alongside each other. Harbour Lights in Southampton and Winchester’s The Screen, for example, now bring the costly Metropolitan Opera to the masses on their screens.

And certainly theatre, in this area anyway, has never been stronger.

This week alone we revealed smash hit musical Les Miserables is to come to The Mayflower. Tickets are expected to fly out of the door when they go on sale later this month.

A week ago I attended our Daily Echo Curtain Call Awards, which celebrate amateur dramatics in Hampshire.

That event sold out in record time too.

Elsewhere, The Point in Eastleigh have opened impressive new facilities recently and both The Nuffield and Theatre Royal Winchester have enviable spring 2010 seasons.

At all levels, theatre has adapted to the digital age just like any other genre. Digital technology is used alongside live performance.

Anyone who witnessed the spectacle of the flying car in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, which returns to Southampton later this year, will know that.

Thankfully, theatre is alive and well – and starring in Hampshire.

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