Stage on screen has never looked so good

Now playing at a theatre near you: The Stratford Shakespeare Festival?

Yes, a recording of Caesar and Cleopatra, the Ontario festival's critically acclaimed 2008 production of Bernard Shaw's proto- Pygmalion comedy, rolls out on 80 Cineplex screens across Canada tomorrow for a single showing. Now you can experience Christopher Plummer in the title role (no, the other title role) without braving the traffic on Highway 401 or flying across the country.

But can the ephemeral pleasures of a live performance ever fully translate to a screen, even when shot in high-definition on nine cameras?

Theatre and opera companies everywhere are banking on in it. New York's Metropolitan Opera has had a much-emulated sideline broadcasting live performances to cinemas for three seasons. Sony's The Hot Ticket recently screened the final Broadway performance of Rent. And Britain's National Theatre has announced plans to live-broadcast to cinemas starting with Helen Mirren's Phaedra in March.

But the Stratford's Caesar and Cleopatra - an experiment the festival hopes to replicate in future seasons - is slightly different from all these examples: It was recorded over a couple of live performances and additional close-ups were later edited in.

The result is light-years ahead of previous Stratford Festival productions recorded live at the festival. In fact, Caesar and Cleopatra makes the 1993 CBC recording of Romeo and Juliet starring Megan Follows look like one of those illegal Broadway bootlegs you find on YouTube.

So, yes, people unable to make it to Stratford, Ont., will get a good idea how Plummer commanded the stage this summer. And in terms of making Stratford a truly national institution once more, the screenings - and the upcoming broadcast on Bravo! in April - are a thrilling project. (It should be noted that the film is also excellent advertising for the festival itself.) Still, compared with seeing Des McAnuff's production in person, the film is lacking - though that is only to be expected. A live performance that is influenced by laughter or silence is always more engrossing than a film of that performance, where you are tied to a different audience's reactions and rhythms.

Chief among what could be improved, however, is the audio. Where theatre and film acting diverge most is in the way the actors speak. The Stratford company performed Caesar on the thrust stage of the Festival Theatre without technical help for their voices . For the filming, they were outfitted with radio microphones hidden under their tunics - but they continued to use their voices to fill the 1,826-seat theatre.

While this isn't a huge problem for actors like Plummer, who have more resonant voices and know how to project without straining, the less well-trained or higher-pitched actors - and this includes some old as well as young cast members - seem to be shouting their lines.

The worst example, unfortunately, is co-star Nikki M. James as Cleopatra, hampered by a squeaky voice; her girlish petulance as the future ruler of Egypt moves from amusing to a nearly unlistenable shriek in the transition from stage to screen - at least until her character grows up and calms down in the second half.

Plummer's magnificent delivery of the text, the way he somehow manages to make Shaw's unwieldy contrarianisms snap like sitcom punchlines, is intact - but strangely the jokes don't land quite as solidly. The reason: Half of Shaw's comedy comes from the company's surprised reactions to Caesar's counterintuitive statements, and too often the camera pauses on Plummer's gracefully aging mug instead of showing us, for instance, Stephen Sutcliffe's hilarious appalled reactions as the uptight Brittanus.

Refreshingly, the film does embrace the live audience, who often appear in the background - an effect that reminds us this shouldn't feel like a normal film. (By contrast, the old CBC broadcasts seem to hide the audience; you see only the tops of their heads in some shots.) In the end, I'd say Stratford's film of Caesar and Cleopatra captures about 60 per cent of the production's appeal. A further 15 per cent of the enjoyment can surely be made up by snacking while watching it. As for the remaining quarter, well, if the movie was as pleasurable as communing with Plummer in a live setting, it would mean the death of live theatre - so given my line of work, I'm not really complaining.

For information on Caesar and Cleopatra screenings go to cineplex.com/events.