Olivier winner A View from the Bridge on the big screen

The visionary Ivo van Hove directs this stunning production of Miller's tragic masterpiece which this month received three UK Olivier Awards for Best Revival, Best Director (Ivo van Hove) and Best Actor (Mark Strong), and was the Evening Standard, Guardian and Independent's top theatre pick of 2014.

In response to the play's Olivier Awards, which director Ivo van Hove said were totally unexpected, he comments: "I'm very happy that what is called avant-garde theatre has found such a great, big audience. That for me has been a mission. The public is ready for this; there is no doubt about that."

The stuff of drama

Accepting the Best Actor award, Mark Strong said it showed the continuing relevance of live theatre. "Inappropriate relationships are the stuff of drama. Miller writes about the human condition. He holds up a mirror and shows us, through the behaviour of other people, how we behave.

"The main challenge for me doing the play was rebuffing people's perceptions of Eddie," Strong says of his first role back in theatre after 12 years of film. "A View from the Bridge has been done many times and people feel they know the play. Eddie's reputation is that of a homophobic, misogynistic bully. I did not see it, or want to play him that way - I saw someone who is handicapped by his lack of education, his lack of emotional awareness. Eddie works on the docks in Brooklyn in the 1950s. That is a hard life."

Originally staged at the Young Vic where it enjoyed an extended sell-out run, the play transferred to the Wyndham's Theatre in London's West End earlier this year where it was filmed for broadcast by National Theatre Live.

A dark-and-passionate tale

In A View from the Bridge, the great American playwright Arthur Miller confronts the American dream in a dark-and-passionate tale. In Brooklyn, docker Eddie Carbone (Strong) welcomes his Sicilian cousins to the land of freedom. But when one of them falls for his beautiful niece, they discover that freedom comes at a price. Eddie's jealous mistrust exposes a deep, unspeakable secret - one that drives him to commit the ultimate betrayal.

Strong (The Imitation Game; Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy; Kingsman: The Secret Service) leads the cast as Eddie Carbone and is joined by Emun Elliott as Marco, Phoebe Fox as Catherine, Michael Gould as Alfieri, Richard Hansell as Louis, Luke Norris as Rodolpho and Nicola Walker as Beatrice. Design and lighting is by Jan Versweyveld with costume designs by An D'Huys and sound design by Tom Gibbons.

This is the Young Vic's second collaboration with NT Live. It follows the broadcast last year of Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire, directed by Benedict Andrews and starring Gillian Anderson, Ben Foster and Vanessa Kirby, which was also screened at Cinema Nouveau.

National Theatre Live enables audiences to experience the best of British theatre throughout the year, as the NT brings cameras into the auditorium to record and broadcast performances from stage to screen. Over three-and-a-half-million people have experienced a National Theatre Live broadcast via satellite, both live and time-delayed, in more than 2000 venues in over 40 different countries around the world, including South Africa. National Theatre Live events are distributed outside the UK through New York-based BY Experience, the pioneer of global live 'alternative content' digital cinema events.

The Hard Problem

Next up is Tom Stoppard's new play The Hard Problem, which will be screened from 16 May. In it, Hilary, a young psychology researcher at a brain-science institute, is nursing a private sorrow and a troubling question at work, where psychology and biology meet. If there is nothing but matter, what is consciousness? This is 'the hard problem', which puts Hilary at odds with her colleagues who include her first mentor Spike, her boss Leo and the billionaire founder of the institute, Jerry. Is the day coming when the computer and the MRI scanner will answer all the questions psychology can ask? Meanwhile Hilary needs a miracle, and she is prepared to pray for one.

Bernard Shaw's Man and Superman will be screened from 13 June, featuring Ralph Fiennes (The English Patient, Schindler's List) as Jack Tanner in this exhilarating reinvention of Shaw's witty, provocative classic. A romantic comedy, an epic fairy tale, a fiery philosophical debate, Man and Superman asks fundamental questions about how we live.

For booking information on A View from the Bridge, download the Ster-Kinekor App on any Nokia, Samsung Android, iPhone or Blackberry smart phone for updates, news and to make a booking. Go to www.cinemanouveau.co.za or sterkinekor.mobi. Follow us on Twitter @nouveaubuzz and on Facebook at Cinema Nouveau. For queries, contact Ticketline on 0861 Movies (668 437).

For more on Live Theatre, Opera and Art on the Big Screen, go to www.writingstudio.co.za