The queue snaked out of the double doors of Harrogate Odeon and into the street last night, but not for Terminator, Transformers or the third Ice Age movie.
Turning their back on Andy Murray's battle with Ernests Gulbis or a sunny evening in the Valley Gardens, Yorkshire punters turned out en masse for Phèdre, the debut of National Theatre Live.
Streamed direct from the South Bank stage to 70 cinemas across the country (and another 200 overseas), the as-it-happens film had sold out in Harrogate before the weekend. Next week's La Traviata from the Royal Opera House is fully booked too and the second National production, All's Well That Ends Well, is going to be upgraded to the cinema's biggest auditorium in October.
"It's been brilliant but quite nerve-wracking," said the cinema manager, David Wilkinson, after a day of setting up digital links and a dish on the roof to take the broadcast from the ageing Thor satellite. Sound quality was a little wavery at the start but the audience flooding out at 9pm was 100% satisfied.
"Captivating, everything I'd hoped for," said Janet Hill, who should have been working a late shift at Harrogate's Turkish baths but got a colleague to cover. "I thought I wasn't going to get in but I was first in the queue for returns and, thank goodness, they found me a seat."
Seventeenth-century passions translated from French also went down well with the Miller family, who came to Harrogate after a parallel showing in York sold out even earlier. "Why? Well, it has got Helen Mirren in it, hasn't it," said 18-year-old Jake Miller, with the happy air of someone who has just finished their A-levels.
The tickets, at £10, were dearer than Harrogate's usual £7.30 but way below the rates paid by the audience at the National Theatre in London, whose coughs and rustles were screened out by targeted microphones. You could hear them clapping, though, and the Harrogate audience followed suit "Though we weren't sure whether to," said Jake's father, David, "seeing that we're 220 miles away."
Wilkinson and his staff were delighted with the sell-out at their cinema, which was picked because of Harrogate's cultured audience profile. The only downside, he said, was that it wasn't a very good evening for popcorn sales.
