Critic’s Notebook: National Theatre to broadcast adaptation of ‘Behind the Beautiful Forevers’
Award-winning book becomes acclaimed play becomes live cinema broadcast
We’re curious to check out the National Theatre’s upcoming broadcast of its production of Behind the Beautiful Forevers. The play is based on Pulitzer Prize-winning author Katherine Boo’s 2012 best-selling non-fiction book Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity, which follows the interconnected lives of several residents of Annawadi, a slum in Mumbai.
Boo, a white American, researched the book when she was living in Mumbai with her husband, an Indian man who had a job in the city. The book was adapted into a 2014 play by renowned British playwright David Hare, an adaptation the Financial Times called “‘humane, epic and politically alert.” The broadcast takes place on Sun., April 12, at 11 a.m,. at Landmark Midtown Art Cinema. It’s rare for the shows to be re-broadcast or to become available in other recorded formats, so fans of the book will want to check it out.