You only really experience the magic of an actor when you are there live. 

Sometime in 2022, if possible again, please go to a theatre where you can 'Sadness is the thing with feathers' can see. There, you can watch and listen to the phenomenal talent of Jesse Mensah - if he hasn't won the Song Contest before then - and experience the magic that sticks to Jacob Derwig. Forget, for the time in between, the stream. Live or not. Because magic, it turns out, cannot be streamed.

From Hugo de Jonge, crisis minister of health who obviously himself does not understand at all why people yearn for art now, we can put on a DVD to satisfy that luxury need while he saves the world. Logical that he thinks so, there are indeed more compelling issues at hand than an evening of theatre. We can even forgive him for not knowing that the DVD player in most houses has been gathering dust for years. Corona brought us the streamed art. Better than nothing? Since yesterday, I have been asking myself that question out loud.

Fortunes

Up front: Grief is the thing with feathers is beautiful. All the reviewers who let you know that got to experience it in an exclusive theatre moment a month ago, lucky bastards. That's why, like so many, I was happy that a stream would be made available. I had not experienced it live and was hoping for a miracle. So on Pentecost Day, I sat ready with the laptop, hoping for the Holy Spirit. Almost immediately, I experienced the difference between the hall and the screen.

Jacob Derwig is one of the all-time great actors we have. I can know because I have been following his career since 1987. What makes Derwig so great is his ability to transform. And what that transforming means, then, can only really be experienced properly if you are there live, in the same room as him. For it is about the graspability of the intangible, the person in the room who has suddenly become someone else, or something else. While nothing has changed. Derwig can change before your eyes from a timid writer to a psychopath, or from a grieving father to a crow. You have to have been there to recount it.

Additional step

On my computer screen, I saw an image of Derwig's transformative power, and having witnessed him live many times, I could imagine what it would be like in real life. Those are a few extra steps that I can take as an experienced, professional viewer, but that you can't ask from an ordinary spectator.

Those extra steps were necessary in all the streams I watched over the past few months. However beautifully portrayed, however good the sound, they remain pictures without that essential ingredient that has drawn people to theatres for 2,500 years. It's that live element that film and television can only compensate for through an excess of realism, technical tricks like CGI and 3D, but which in a theatre space requires only an actor and a spectator.

Takeaway menu

So is streaming pointless? Certainly not, it is a useful addition, a fine extra surrogate product, just as a takeaway menu from a top restaurant can be an extremely satisfying alternative to the real thing. Streams will remain, just as takeaway top menus will remain, and I'm glad of that. However, they in no way replace the real experience, and may even cause potential audiences to drop out because they have no reference to the real experience.

This applies to top restaurants, as well as top theatre.