Saturday, November 1, 2008

Caesar Coming to Big Screen

"Stratford Shakespeare Festival's production of Caesar and Cleopatra, starring Christopher Plummer, will be hitting the big and small screens.

"A film version of the stage production will premiere as one-night gala screenings at up to 80 Cineplex theatres across Canada, according to a report by the Globe and Mail on Saturday.

"The partnership with CTV-Bravo also means the production will eventually air on television.

"'It's lucid, it is very very funny [and] it's got a real sense of interplay between the audience and the players,' the festival's general director Antoni Cimolino told the Globe.

"The Stratford adaptation of the George Bernard Shaw play involves sumptuous costumes and a highly visual staging which should lend itself to a screening, according to Cimolino.

"Funding for the project has come from CTV and a private donor.

"The venture follows in the footsteps of New York's Metropolitan Opera, which has been broadcasting its productions, in real time, to cinemas across the world. The only difference is that the Stratford model isn't a live experience.

"'It's partly brand extension. It's putting bums in seats. It's making people embrace Stratford as a national institution,' said entertainment lawyer Michael Levine, who helped broker the deal.'"

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