National Theatre Live: Othello (2023)

Bed & Breakfast

Life changes for three women who run a failing hotel when a mysterious man washes up at the beach.

Ocean Odyssey

500 million years ago life left this blue womb and colonized the land, but we are still intricately linked to the ocean. Our climates, coastlines, ecosystems, and economies are tied to the perpetual movement of water between continents. The great ocean currents are the arteries and veins of Planet Earth! This is the story of one particularly fascinating flow – the East Australian Current, a massive oceanic river that stretches the length of Australia’s east coast.

Cellmates

Leroy Lowe, grand dragon of the Texas Ku Klux Klan confronts everything he's been taught to hate when he's sentenced to three years of hard labor on a prison work farm, where Warden Merville, dead set on rehabilitating Leroy, chooses Emilio, a Hispanic field worker imprisoned for fighting for labor rights, to be his cell-mate. Leroy, confined in a small cell with the enemy, far from the KKK comrades who deserted him, finds the chatty Emilio slowly chipping away at his anger and prejudice. His weekly rehabilitation meetings with the warden, barely tolerable as the man drones on about farm labor and field crops, take on a different meaning when Madalena, a beautiful Mexican maid is hired to clean the warden's office. An unconventional love story develops that opens Leroy's eyes to the possibility of a different life. And a man who was a born and bred racist finds himself heading down a completely different path to salvation.

The Escape

Details the struggles of an oppressed woman's sexual frustrations.

Higher Than a Kite

The stooges are auto mechanics working for the R.A.F. in England. After wrecking an officers car they need a place to hide, but their choice, a sewer pipe, turns out to a bomb which is dropped on the enemy. Finding themselves behind enemy lines, Moe and Curly disguise as German officers and Larry dresses as a seductive fraulein. While general Bommel chases after Larry, Moe and Curly steal the secret plans from the high command.

Lydia Bailey

A young Boston lawyer, Albron Hamlin, goes to Haiti in 1802 to find Lydia Bailey, whose estate he must settle. The island is war-torn in the strife between Toussaing L'Overture, the black president, and the French who are trying to retake possession of the country. Hamlin finds Lydia and, against the background of war and rebellion, they fall in love while helping the Haitians against the French.

I'm Tired of Killing Your Lovers

Theophilus Palios, owns a small traditional publishing house. He man madly falls in love with Sia, that is doing vocals on the show of a known singer. Sia maintains her living by the "generosity" of old fans. In the face of Theophilus, Sia will experience true love, though it continues to accept the offers of numerous admirers. Theophilus mad by jealousy, is lead to huge wastages and ultimately to economic collapse. He ends up entangled in a case of robbery and murder. Sia, in a guilt and self-sacrifice crisis, becomes mistress of the investigating policeman in exchange for his silence. This creates an odd triangle ..

Ambition

When a sinister figure offers them success in exchange for murder, a group of old school friends struggle with paranoia and distrust as they turn on each other to complete the arrangement.

Blessings of the Land

Maria and Jose, a young married couple begin life together in an orchard in the countryside. It isn't long until they have four children: Miguel, Arturo, Angelita, and Lito. The eldest, Miguel, is a deaf-mute. Life is good for the family and the children grow up and bring joy to the community. But trouble enters their lives when Jose makes an enemy of Bruno, a widower, much feared in the village.

Peace and quiet beyond the mud

Alik, who has spent his entire sixty-year life with his mother in a small cottage in a village on the Belarusian-Lithuanian border, shows his reality to his nephew.

Saturday Afternoon

Harry and his friend have planned to go out for an afternoon of fun. But first, Harry must figure out how to slip away from his domineering wife with some money to spend...

MABAYN ASAWAHIL

Plot unavailable

About Our Astronauts

Three cosmonauts bid farewell to their loved ones and embark on a journey into space, where they encounter discoveries in uncharted territory yet to be explored by humankind.

1st Kiss

After losing her husband to death following a troubled marriage, a woman unexpectedly travels back to the moment before their first meeting, allowing them to reconnect and rekindle their romance.

Mborairapé

RAP is a music path. Jaraguá is Guarani.

Union County

Cody is a recovering opiate addict in rural Ohio, 45 days clean and enlisted in a strictly enforced drug court programme by the county government. Local sober-living facilities are full, so Cody is living in his car on the outskirts of town and working at the nearby lumber mill to save money and keep busy. But his past doesn't want to forget him.

A Bright World

A tale about fantasies and pain. A character lost in a wet cloud of grass, dirty socks and giant joints.

Dance Charlie Dance

A stage-struck small-towner is tricked in backing a bad straight play, but it turns out to be a unintentional comedy hit. Problems arise, when he is sued for plagiarism.

Kazakh Khanate: Diamond Sword

Set in the 15th century, the story follows the formation of the Kazakh state after the death of Genghis Khan and the usurpation of power by one of Khan's descendants, leading the sultans Kerei and Janibek to resort to some nomadic tribes to remove the usurper, hoping for a better life and freedom.

National Theatre Live: Saint Joan

Josie Rourke directs Gemma Arterton as Joan of Arc in Bernard Shaw's electrifying classic. Performed at the Donmar Warehouse, and part of the NT Live series of broadcasts.

Henry V - Live at Shakespeare's Globe

Shakespeare’s masterpiece of the turbulence of war and the arts of peace tells the romantic story of Henry’s campaign to recapture the English possessions in France. But the ambitions of this charismatic king are challenged by a host of vivid characters caught up in the real horrors of war. Henry V, which opened the new Globe with the words ‘O for a muse of fire’, celebrates the power of language to summon into life courts, pubs, ships and battlefields within the ‘wooden O’ - and beyond.

Hamlet at Elsinore

The ghost of the King of Denmark tells his son Hamlet to avenge his murder by killing the new king, Hamlet's uncle. Hamlet feigns madness, contemplates life and death, and seeks revenge. His uncle, fearing for his life, also devises plots to kill Hamlet. An historic BBC production taped on location in and around Kronborg castle in Elsinore (Denmark), in which the play is set.

National Theatre Live: Hedda Gabler

Hedda and Tesman have just returned from their honeymoon and the relationship is already in trouble. Trapped but determined, Hedda tries to control those around her, only to see her own world unravel.

National Theatre Live: Twelfth Night

A ship is wrecked on the rocks. Viola is washed ashore but her twin brother Sebastian is lost. Determined to survive on her own, she steps out to explore a new land. So begins a whirlwind of mistaken identity and unrequited love. The nearby households of Olivia and Orsino are overrun with passion. Even Olivia's upright housekeeper Malvolia is swept up in the madness. Where music is the food of love, and nobody is quite what they seem, anything proves possible.

National Theatre Live: Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead

Against the backdrop of Hamlet, two hapless minor characters, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, take centre stage. As the young double act stumble their way in and out of the action of Shakespeare’s iconic drama, they become increasingly out of their depth as their version of the story unfolds.

National Theatre Live: Obsession

Gino is a drifter, down-at-heel and magnetically handsome. At a road side restaurant he encounters husband and wife, Joseph and Hanna. Irresistibly attracted to each other, Gino and Hanna begin a fiery affair and plot to murder her husband. But, in this chilling tale of passion and destruction, the crime only serves to tear them apart.

National Theatre Live: Angels In America — Part Two: Perestroika

America in the mid-1980s. In the midst of the AIDS crisis and a conservative Reagan administration, New Yorkers grapple with life and death, love and sex, heaven and hell. This new staging of Tony Kushner's multi-award winning two-part play, Angels In America: A Gay Fantasia On National Themes, is directed by Olivier and Tony award winning director Marianne Elliott.

National Theatre Live: Yerma

A woman is driven to the unthinkable by her desperate desire to have a child in Simon Stone’s radical production of Lorca’s achingly powerful masterpiece.

National Theatre Live: Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

In the early hours of the morning on the campus of an American college, Martha, much to her husband George’s displeasure, has invited the new professor and his wife to their home for some after-party drinks. As the alcohol flows and dawn approaches, the young couple are drawn into George and Martha’s toxic games until the evening reaches its climax in a moment of devastating truth-telling.

National Theatre Live: The Cherry Orchard

Madame Ranevskaya is a spoiled, aging aristocratic lady who returns from a trip to Paris to face the loss of her magnificent Cherry Orchard estate after a default on the mortgage. In denial, she continues living in the past, deluding herself and her family, while the beautiful cherry trees are being axed down by the re-possessor Lopakhin, her former serf, who has his own agenda.

National Theatre Live: Collaborators

John Hodge's Collaborators centers on an imaginary encounter between Joseph Stalin and the playwright Mikhail Bulgakov.

Death of a Salesman

Willy Loman is an over-the-hill salesman who faces a personal turning point when he loses his job and attempts to make peace with his family: Willy's long-suffering wife Linda, and Biff and Happy, his troubled sons and his life.

National Theatre Live: Fleabag

Fleabag may seem oversexed, emotionally unfiltered and self-obsessed, but that's just the tip of the iceberg. With family and friendships under strain and a guinea pig café struggling to keep afloat, Fleabag suddenly finds herself with nothing to lose.

National Theatre Live: King Lear

An aged king decides to divide his kingdom between his three daughters, according to which of them is most eloquent in praising him. His favourite, Cordelia, says nothing. Simon Russell Beale, whose recent appearances at the National include Timon of Athens and Collaborators, takes the title role in Shakespeare’s tragedy.

National Theatre Live: Angels In America — Part One: Millennium Approaches

The National Theatre's live theatrical production of Tony Kushner's two-part play 'Angels In America' about New Yorkers grappling with the AIDS crisis during the mid-1980s.

National Theatre Live: Amadeus

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, a rowdy young prodigy, arrives in Vienna, the music capital of the world – and he’s determined to make a splash. Awestruck by his genius, court composer Antonio Salieri has the power to promote his talent or destroy his name. Seized by obsessive jealousy he begins a war with Mozart, with music, and ultimately, with God.

Rent: Filmed Live on Broadway

Set in New York City's gritty East Village, the revolutionary rock opera RENT tells the story of a group of bohemians struggling to live and pay their rent. "Measuring their lives in love," these starving artists strive for success and acceptance while enduring the obstacles of poverty, illness and the AIDS epidemic.

Hemmet

A satire of the welfare society showing the mechanical nature of the elderly care.

Company

Set in modern upper-crust Manhattan, an exploration of love and commitment as seen through the eyes of a charming perpetual bachelor questioning his single state and his enthusiastically married, slightly envious friends.

Spirited Away: Live on Stage

A young girl, Chihiro, becomes trapped in a strange new world of spirits. When her parents undergo a mysterious transformation, she must call upon the courage she never knew she had to free her family. The film version of the stage production was shot during the play’s 2022 run at the Imperial Theatre in Tokyo.

National Theatre Live: War Horse

Based on Michael Morpurgo's novel and adapted for the stage by Nick Stafford, War Horse takes audiences on an extraordinary journey from the fields of rural Devon to the trenches of First World War France.

National Theatre Live: Dixon and Daughters

Mary has just been released from prison. She wants to come home and forget all about it but Briana has other ideas. Over a tumultuous two days a family is forced to confront not just their past but themselves. Because even if you refuse to hear the truth, the truth doesn’t go away. Róisín McBrinn returns to Clean Break (Favour) to direct this powerful story of family and forgiveness by Deborah Bruce (The House They Grew Up In). A co-production from National Theatre and Clean Break.

National Theatre Live: The Habit of Art

National Theatre Live’s 2010 broadcast of Alan Bennett’s acclaimed play The Habit of Art, with Richard Griffiths, Alex Jennings and Frances de la Tour, returns to cinemas as part of the National Theatre's 50th anniversary celebrations. Benjamin Britten, sailing uncomfortably close to the wind with his new opera, Death in Venice, seeks advice from his former collaborator and friend, W H Auden. During this imagined meeting, their first for twenty-five years, they are observed and interrupted by, amongst others, their future biographer and a young man from the local bus station. Alan Bennett’s play is as much about the theatre as it is about poetry or music. It looks at the unsettling desires of two difficult men, and at the ethics of biography. It reflects on growing old, on creativity and inspiration, and on persisting when all passion’s spent: ultimately, on the habit of art.

National Theatre Live: Hamlet

A 2010 broadcast of Hamlet returns to cinemas as part of the NT's 50th anniversary celebrations. Following his celebrated performances at the National Theatre in Burnt by the Sun, The Revenger's Tragedy, Philistines and The Man of Mode, Rory Kinnear plays Hamlet in a dynamic new production of Shakespeare’s complex and profound play about the human condition, directed by Nicholas Hytner. He is joined by Clare Higgins (Gertrude), Patrick Malahide (Claudius), David Calder (Polonius), James Laurenson (Ghost/Player King) and Ruth Negga (Ophelia).

RSC Live: The Tempest

On a distant island a man waits. Robbed of his position, power and wealth, his enemies have left him in isolation. But this is no ordinary man, and this no ordinary island. Prospero is a magician, able to control the very elements and bend nature to his will. When a sail appears on the horizon, he reaches out across the ocean to the ship that carries the men who wronged him. Creating a vast magical storm he wrecks the ship and washes his enemies up on the shore. When they wake they find themselves lost on a fantastical island where nothing is as it seems.

National Theatre Live: The Seagull

Emilia Clarke makes her West End debut as Nina in Anya Reiss’ unique 21st century modernisation of Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull, with direction by Jamie Lloyd.

National Theatre Live: Skylight

On a bitterly cold London evening, schoolteacher Kyra Hollis receives an unexpected visit from her former lover, Tom Sergeant, a successful and charismatic restaurateur whose wife has recently died. As the evening progresses, the two attempt to rekindle their once passionate relationship only to find themselves locked in a dangerous battle of opposing ideologies and mutual desires.

National Theatre Live: After Life

A group of strangers grapple with this impossible question as they find themselves in a bureaucratic waiting room between life and death. Encouraged by enigmatic officials, they must sift through their past lives to choose their forever. Adapted from Hirokazu Kore-eda's award-winning film, After Life is a surreal and powerfully human look at the way we view our lives, and a haunting meditation on what it is to live - and to die.

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

In 1846, Anthony Hope sails into London with the mysterious Sweeney Todd, a once-naive barber whose life and marriage was uprooted by a corrupt justice system. Todd confides in Nellie Lovett, the owner of a local meat pie shop, and the two become partners, as Todd swears revenge on those that have wronged him and decides to take up his old profession.

Newsies

A week in the life of the exploited, child newspaper sellers in turn-of-the-century New York. When their publisher, Joseph Pulitzer, tries to squeeze a little more profit out of their labours, they organize a strike, only to be confronted with the Pulitzer's hard-ball tactics.

Indecent

TV production of the Tony Award-winning play, based on the story of a Broadway acting troupe arrested for indecency for performing Sholem Asch's "God of Vengeance" and their fight against censorship.

National Theatre Live: Macbeth

The ruined aftermath of a bloody civil war. Ruthlessly fighting to survive, the Macbeths are propelled towards the crown by forces of elemental darkness. Shakespeare’s most intense and terrifying tragedy, directed by Rufus Norris, sees Rory Kinnear and Anne-Marie Duff return to the National Theatre to play Macbeth and Lady Macbeth.

National Theatre Live: Follies

New York, 1971. There’s a party on the stage of the Weismann Theatre. Tomorrow the iconic building will be demolished. Thirty years after their final performance, the Follies girls gather to have a few drinks, sing a few songs and lie about themselves.

National Theatre Live: Julius Caesar

Caesar returns in triumph to Rome and the people pour out of their homes to celebrate. Alarmed by the autocrat’s popularity, the educated élite conspire to bring him down. After his assassination, civil war erupts on the streets of the capital. Nicholas Hytner’s production will thrust the audience into the street party that greets Caesar’s return, the congress that witnesses his murder, the rally that assembles for his funeral and the chaos that explodes in its wake.

National Theatre Live: A Streetcar Named Desire

As Blanche’s fragile world crumbles, she turns to her sister Stella for solace – but her downward spiral brings her face to face with the brutal, unforgiving Stanley Kowalski.

National Theatre Live: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

Tennessee Williams’ twentieth century masterpiece Cat on a Hot Tin Roof played a strictly limited season in London’s West End in 2017. An alcoholic ex-football player drinks his days away, having failed to come to terms with his sexuality and his real feelings for his football buddy who died after an ambiguous accident. His wife is crucified by her desperation to make him desire her: but he resists the affections of his wife. His reunion with his father—who is dying of cancer—jogs a host of memories and revelations for both father and son.

National Theatre Live: Dear England

The country that gave the world football has since delivered a painful pattern of loss. Why can’t England’s men win at their own game? With the worst track record for penalties in the world, Gareth Southgate knows he needs to open his mind and face up to the years of hurt, to take team and country back to the promised land.

Crash Landing On You: Live in Seoul

When South Korean heiress, Yoon Seri, unexpectedly crash-lands in North Korea after a paragliding mishap, her life takes an unforeseen turn.

Company: A Musical Comedy

Set in modern upper-crust Manhattan, an exploration of love and commitment as seen through the eyes of a charming perpetual bachelor questioning his single state and his enthusiastically married, slightly envious friends.

National Theatre Live: Vanya

Andrew Scott brings multiple characters to life in Chekhov's Uncle Vanya, filmed live in West End, London. Hopes, dreams, and regrets are thrust into sharp focus in this one-man adaptation which explores the complexities of human emotions.

Into the Woods

In a woods filled with magic and fairy tale characters, a baker and his wife set out to end the curse put on them by their neighbor, a spiteful witch.

Royal Shakespeare Company - Richard II

A monarch ordained by God to lead his people. But he is also a man of very human weakness. A man whose vanity threatens to divide the great houses of England and drag his people into a dynastic civil war that will last 100 years.

From Here to Eternity

In 1941 Hawaii, a private is cruelly punished for not boxing on his unit's team, while his captain's wife and second in command are falling in love.

Billy Elliot: The Musical Live

In County Durham, England, 1984, a talented young dancer, Billy Elliot, stumbles out of the boxing ring and onto the ballet floor. He faces many trials and triumphs as he strives to conquer his family’s set ways, inner conflict, and standing on his toes in a musical that questions masculinity, gender norms and conformity.

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

In 1846, Anthony Hope sails into London with the mysterious Sweeney Todd, a once-naive barber whose life and marriage was uprooted by a corrupt justice system. Todd confides in Nellie Lovett, the owner of a local meat pie shop, and the two become partners, as Todd swears revenge on those that have wronged him and decides to take up his old profession.

National Theatre Live: Medea

Medea is a wife and a mother. For the sake of her husband, Jason, she’s left her home and borne two sons in exile. But when he abandons his family for a new life, Medea faces banishment and separation from her children. Cornered, she begs for one day’s grace. It’s time enough. She exacts an appalling revenge and destroys everything she holds dear.

A Memory of Two Mondays

Workers in an auto parts warehouse in 1933 New York City inhabit a bleak, dead-end world in the depths of the Depression where, at least, they have jobs. Introduced by its playwright, Arthur Miller, it was the first in a series of NET Playhouse programs concerning life in America during the Depression years.

National Theatre Live: Nye

Confronted with death, National Health Service founder Aneurin ‘Nye’ Bevan’s deepest memories lead him on a mind-bending journey back through his life; from childhood to mining underground, Parliament and fights with Winston Churchill.

National Theatre Live: Under Milk Wood

A community is sleeping. If you listen closely, you can hear their dreams. The retired sea captain yearning for his lost love. The landlady living in terror of her guests. A father who can no longer access his memories. A son in search of redemption. As they awake to boiled eggs and the postman, the residents of a small Welsh village juggle old secrets and new realities.

National Theatre Live: Life of Pi

Puppetry, magic and storytelling combine in a unique, Olivier Award-winning stage adaptation of the best-selling novel. After a cargo ship sinks in the middle of the vast Pacific Ocean, a 16-year-old boy named Pi is stranded on a lifeboat with four other survivors – a hyena, a zebra, an orangutan and a Royal Bengal tiger. Filmed live in London’s West End and featuring state-of-the-art visuals, the epic journey of endurance and hope is bought to life in a breath-taking new way for cinemas screens.

National Theatre Live: Good

As the world faces its Second World War, John Halder, a good, intelligent German professor, finds himself pulled into a movement with unthinkable consequences.

National Theatre Live: A View from the Bridge

The great Arthur Miller confronts the American dream in this dark and passionate tale. In Brooklyn, longshoreman Eddie Carbone 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. The visionary Ivo van Hove directs this stunning production of Miller’s tragic masterpiece.

National Theatre Live: Les Blancs

An African country teeters on the edge of civil war. A society prepares to drive out its colonial present and claim an independent future. Racial tensions boil over. Tshembe, returned home from England for his father’s funeral, finds himself in the eye of the storm.

National Theatre Live: Barber Shop Chronicles

For generations, African men have gathered in barber shops to discuss the world. These are places where the banter can be barbed and the truth is always telling. Follow along as we leap from a barber shop in Peckham to Johannesburg, Harare, Kampala, Lagos and Accra over the course of a single day.

The King and I

Widowed Welsh mother Anna Loenowens becomes a governess and English tutor to the wives and many children of the stubborn King Mongkut of Siam. Anna and the King have a clash of personalities as she works to teach the royal family about the English language, customs and etiquette, and rushes to prepare a party for a group of European diplomats who must change their opinions about the King.

National Theatre Live: Antigone

In the unstable aftermath of a civil war, Creon, the new King of Thebes, asserts his authority by forbidding anyone from honouring the death of the traitor Polyneices. But Antigone, Polyneices' sister, will not obey. When Creon's authority is challenged, a gripping conflict emerges between the power of an individual and the state. Polly Findlay's electric 2012 production brings Sophocles' tragedy into the modern world as a gripping political thriller.

Love Never Dies

Set ten years after the events at the Paris Opera House, the Phantom has fled to New York, where he lives amongst the joyrides and freak shows of Coney Island. He has finally found a place for his music to soar, all that is missing is his love Christine Daaé. In a bid to win back her love, the Phantom lures Christine, her husband Raoul, and their young son Gustave from Manhattan, to the glittering and glorious world of Coney Island... they have no idea what lies in store for them...

Wuthering Heights - Bristol Old Vic

Based on the novel by Emily Brontë, adapted and directed by Emma Rice. Rescued from the Liverpool docks as a child, Heathcliff is adopted by the Earnshaws and taken to live at Wuthering Heights. He finds a kindred spirit in Catherine Earnshaw and a fierce love ignites. When forced apart, a brutal chain of events is unleashed. Shot through with music, dance, passion and hope, Emma Rice (Romantics Anonymous, Brief Encounter) transforms Emily Brontë’s masterpiece into a powerful and uniquely theatrical experience. Lucy McCormick (Post Popular) and Ash Hunter (Hamilton) lead the company of performers and musicians in this intoxicating revenge tragedy for our time.

National Theatre Live: Antony & Cleopatra

Caesar and his assassins are dead. General Mark Antony now rules alongside his fellow defenders of Rome. But at the fringes of a war-torn empire the Egyptian Queen Cleopatra and Mark Antony have fallen fiercely in love. In a tragic fight between devotion and duty, obsession becomes a catalyst for war.

National Theatre Live: Best of Enemies

In 1968 America, as two men fight to become the next president, all eyes are on the battle between two others: the cunningly conservative William F. Buckley Jr., and the unruly liberal Gore Vidal. During a new nightly television format, they debate the moral landscape of a shattered nation.