WHEN a performance of the National Theatre’s production of The Magistrate was screened live at Ely Cinema at the Maltings this week, two members of the audience had a very special reason for making sure of their tickets.

Nigel and Anne Ovens’ daughter Sarah is a leading member of the cast.

Twenty-six-year-old Sarah graduated in 2009 from the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama with a first class honours degree.

Her first professional role followed that autumn when she was cast as Marianne in Moliere’s The Miser at the Royal Exchange in Manchester and then landed her first television role as one of the Martin sisters in the BBC’s autumn serialisation of Jane Austin’s Emma.

Sarah appeared at Stratford-upon-Avon in the Royal Shakespeare Company’s 2012 production of The Heresy of Love, playing Angelica, before starting rehearsals for The Magistrate, an acclaimed revival of the mid-Victorian farce by Arthur Wing Pinero.

Nigel Ovens, head of information technology at King’s Ely Junior where Sarah was a pupil, said: “We were thrilled when we saw a performance of the play was going to be screened in Ely. It’s a wonderful initiative by National Theatre Live, ADeC and Ely Cinema.”

National Theatre Live offers audiences around the world the chance to see the best of British theatre broadcast live from the London stage. Ely Cinema is one of 500 cinemas in 20 countries which have collaborated with the initiative.