National Theatre Live: Frankenstein

The cinema recording of Danny Boyle's 2011 production of Frankenstein at the Royal National Theatre. Nick Dear's adaptation tells Mary Shelley's novel from the Creature's side: the play opens on his birth. Its defining decision is the swap. Benedict Cumberbatch and Jonny Lee Miller alternated the roles of Victor Frankenstein and the Creature from performance to performance. The production opened on 5 February 2011 and ran until 2 May. Through National Theatre Live it was broadcast to cinemas worldwide on 17 and 24 March 2011, and with encore screenings reached around 800,000 cinema viewers by 2018. The awards were symmetrical too. Cumberbatch and Miller shared the Laurence Olivier Award and the London Evening Standard Theatre Award for Best Actor. Cumberbatch also won the Critics' Circle Theatre Award. Bruno Poet's lighting design took an Olivier as well. The production was later staged elsewhere, at the Sydney Opera House in 2013 and the Denver Center for the Performing Arts in 2016. Who it is for: viewers open to watching recorded theatre and curious about two actors trading the same two parts. Who it is not for: anyone expecting cinema. This is not a film but a stage recording made with fixed cameras, and it has to be watched as one.