When the Curtain Falls, Theatre Gets a Second Life – front mezz junkies, Theater News

Frontmezzjunkies reports: Broadway, the West End and London’s National Theatre are bringing live theatre to movie screens, opening the door to a whole new theatrical afterlife.

By Ross

A curtain call used to feel like the beginning of the end. Now, sometimes, it is only the beginning of a show’s second life. More and more, Broadway and UK productions are being filmed for movie theatres, creating a world where, suddenly, a production that once belonged to one particular stage can find an audience somewhere else. As a theatre junkie and critic, I find that possibility slightly unsettling at first, because theatre has always felt so tied to the live experience. But when I step back, it feels enormously exciting.

The National Theatre Live model has been doing this successfully for years, allowing productions from London, including the National Theatre, Almeida, and the West End, to reach audiences far beyond London. It has created its own kind of theatrical afterlife, where a production can close in one city and continue appearing at home for screenings or in cinemas elsewhere. Now Broadway is becoming part of that conversation in a very big way, with filmed stage productions finding their way into movie theatres across the country and beyond. And I love the idea of it.

Not because a filmed production replaces sitting in the theatre. It doesn’t. There is something about being in the room, surrounded by an audience experiencing a performance at exactly the same moment, that belongs specifically to live theatre. But a filmed version can preserve something that would otherwise exist only in memory. It can give a production another audience. It can give someone who never had the opportunity to see it live a chance to discover it in towns and cities far and wide. And, perhaps most excitingly, it can allow those of us who loved a show a chance to see it again.

The filmed live capture of Hadestown is already showing just how exciting this new theatrical afterlife can be. After exceeding expectations at the box office, the film has now grossed $18.2 million domestically after its second week in movie theatres. Its opening weekend brought in $10.2 million, edging past the opening weekend of the filmed Hamilton stage production, which grossed $10.1 million in 2025. The producers of Hadestown originally announced a five-night theatrical release, but demand, including repeat viewings, has prompted an extension that will keep the film in movie theatres indefinitely.

Repeat viewings, that might be my favourite part of this whole development. Theatre is usually so wonderfully, frustratingly ephemeral. You see it, you absorb it, you talk about it, and then you wait for the next show, hoping the next experience will be just as wonderful, or even better. A filmed version changes that relationship. Suddenly a production can become something you can return to, again and again. Ad infinitum.

Hadestown: The Musical was filmed during three performances at London’s Lyric Theatre, with Reeve Carney, Eva Noblezada, André De Shields, Amber Gray and Patrick Page returning to their roles. The film premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival before its North American theatrical release on July 24. And the rest is theatrical history, as they say. I must admit that I love that a production that once lived inside a London theatre can now be experienced by audiences sitting in movie theatres across North America and beyond. And Hadestown, it seems, is only the beginning.

Six the Musical Live! arrived in movie theatres on August 14, captured live at London’s Vaudeville Theatre with the original London Six Queens. The idea of seeing this infectious musical on a cinema screen has me particularly intrigued because this is where my imagination starts running away with the possibilities.

I have this fantasy. It is about what a filmed Six could become. And something I have been fantasizing about for years, ever since seeing it on the Broadway stage, imagining a filmed version where each of those glorious numbers could become its own fully staged music video. I see the Queens in full-period costume, castles, English countryside, elaborate locations, intense choreography, sharp storytelling, and enormous cinematic images. Give me a little ‘Bridgerton‘ mixed with a fully formed Madonna or Lady Gaga music video. Keep the wit, the pop concert energy, the history, and the theatricality, but let the camera take the Queens somewhere the stage cannot. That is my dream Six movie project. Please, I beg you, someone develop that project too. Because I’ll be there. But, for now, I will happily take the live capture.

But in the real world, the filmed-theatre list is getting wonderfully crowded. There is also Giant, the four-time Tony-nominated and Olivier Award-winning play starring John Lithgow, which was filmed during its London premiere with the principal cast that just closed on Broadway. Fallen Angels, starring Rose Byrne and Kelli O’Hara, was also filmed live for distribution when it was at Roundabout’s Todd Haimes Theatre during its Broadway run. Both are heading to cinemas worldwide.

The list continues to grow, albeit in different directions and different ways. Lin-Manuel Miranda is directing a film adaptation of Dave Malloy’s Octet, with a remarkable cast that includes Amanda Seyfried, Rachel Zegler, and Jonathan Groff. Richard Linklater’s Merrily We Roll Along continues its extraordinary 20-year filming process, while Joe Turner’s Come and Gone is also moving toward the screen, as Denzel Washington and Todd Black continue their project of bringing August Wilson’s plays to film.

And there are more projects announced for the future, including Beautiful: The Carole King Musical, Girl From the North Country, Guys and Dolls, Gypsy, Oliver!, Once on This Island and Sunset Boulevard. What form some of these projects will ultimately take remains to be seen, but the sheer number of titles suggests that this experiment in bringing theatre to screens is not slowing down.

Then there are the productions that have already been filmed and may eventually reach cinemas from places I could never have reached during their original engagements. I am particularly intrigued by the possibility of seeing Josh O’Connor in Golden Boy, filmed at London’s Almeida. That was a production I was genuinely sad to miss, and knowing that a filmed version exists gives the show another possibility beyond the theatre where it originally played. And now there is The Misanthrope, the National Theatre’s production starring Sandra Oh, which is the latest filmed capture and one I am particularly thrilled to get the chance to see. Suddenly, these aren’t just productions I wish I had been able to catch in London. They are productions I may actually get another chance to experience in all their theatrical glory.

This makes me reminisce about the productions I have already been lucky enough to see in London. I would happily sit down and rewatch the fabulous production of Les Liaisons Dangereuses, which I saw with friends during my May London Theatre Adventure at the National Theatre starring the powerhouse Lesley Manville. Not to mention the equally fabulous The Importance of Being Earnest that I saw in the West End last January. Years ago, because of NTLive, I was able to see the West End version of Angels in America at BAM Cinema before it transferred to Broadway, and what a treat that was. The pleasure of knowing that a production can be captured and preserved means that something I experienced once, in that particular room and at that particular moment, might someday be something I can experience twice, or even thrice, if I so desired.

It can begin in a rehearsal room, move onto a stage, travel to another city, become a filmed version and find another audience in another country. Someone can discover it months or years after the original production has closed. Someone else can watch it again because they absolutely loved it the first time. And a theatre fan sitting in a cinema far from London or Broadway can experience a production that once seemed impossible to get to.

And maybe that is the most exciting thing about theatre finding its way onto the big screen. The closing notice might have been posted, but the story does not necessarily have to stop there. A great production can be preserved, shared, revisited, and even reimagined, finding new audiences long after the curtain has come down in the original room. For me, a theatre junkie and critic, that feels like a pretty wonderful second act. And I’m applauding it happily.