National Theatre Live: Bacchae (2025)

Meinir's Tree

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Frine cortigiana d'Oriente

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Les poupées persanes

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Siapa Dia

Layar, a popular film star who feels bored with his career wants to make a musical theater set in a family history that is always linked to Indonesian film history.

Oedipus Rex

The story of Oedipus' gradual discovery of his primal crime, killing his father and marrying his mother, filmed by the famed British theatrical director Sir Tyrone Guthrie. This elegant version of Sophocles' play adds a brilliant stroke: the actors wear masks just as the Greeks did in the playwright's day.

Alexander

Alexander, the King of Macedonia, leads his legions against the giant Persian Empire. After defeating the Persians, he leads his army across the then known world, venturing farther than any westerner had ever gone, all the way to India.

Medea

Based on the plot of Euripides' Medea. Medea centers on the barbarian protagonist as she finds her position in the Greek world threatened, and the revenge she takes against her husband Jason who has betrayed her for another woman.

Ten Minutes to Showtime

After passing out, Louise, playing Dorothy in her senior production of The Wizard of Oz, must fight to go on-stage while navigating the selfish interests of her co-stars in this fantastical ode to musical theater.

Calypso

A nurse keeps a patient in a coma, but one day his wife and son visit him.

Phaedra

A modern retelling of the Greek myth of Phaedra. The young and fiery second wife of an extremely wealthy shipping magnate meets her estranged stepson Alexis and sparks immediately fly. Their love seems doomed from the beginning when she convinces him to come to Paris to meet his father.

The Trojan Women

In the aftermath of the Trojan Wars, Queen Hecuba takes stock of the defeated kingdom. Her son has been killed, and his widow, Andromache, is left to raise their son, Astyanax, alone. Hecuba's daughter, Cassandra, fears being enslaved by her Greek masters, while Helen of Troy risks being executed. Astyanax also becomes the focus of the Greeks' attention as the last male heir of the Trojan royal family.

Electra

Living in exile after the death of their father, the grown children of a murdered and usurped king converge to exact eye-for-an-eye revenge.

Immortals

Theseus is a mortal man chosen by Zeus to lead the fight against the ruthless King Hyperion, who is on a rampage across Greece to obtain a weapon that can destroy humanity.

The Colossus of Rhodes

While on holiday in Rhodes, Athenian war hero Darios becomes involved in two different plots to overthrow the tyrannical king, one from Rhodian patriots and the other from sinister Phoenician agents.

Christiaan Hesen

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Socrates

A false accusation leads the philosopher Socrates to trial and condemnation in 4th century BC Athens.

Romeo and Juliet '99

An original, semi-modernized musical adaptation of Shakespeare's classic romance.

Medusa

When the Medusa destroys all of Athens, one last warrior must avenge his wife and city.

The Centurion

A Roman soldier falls in love with the daughter of a Greek city's anti-Roman leader.

The Tragedy of Man

Jankovics's adaptation of the eponymous play is divided into multiple parts, and depicts the creation and fall of Man throughout history.

Sonata

Before an important audition, a mute theater student summons his five core emotions as he deals with the loss of a close friend.

Grey and Black

The story of Maria, a woman betrayed by his companion, David, when he steals a sack of money and flees, taking refuge in the island of Pico. Furious and determined to avenge herself, she proposes to an Police Inspector, Lucas, to chase and to find David. However, David, on a visit to the island of Faial, falls in love with a local, Marina. Maria and Lucas look for David in the Azores, they cross with Mariana in Faial and the three will discover David in his house of the mountain, at the top of the Peak. In a final confrontation, as in a Greek tragedy, Mary and David adjust the accounts that fate has traced to them.

Romeo and Juliet

Premiering on BBC as a part of their Sunday-Night Theatre program, this 1955 adaptation of Shakespeare's classic play closely follows the original text. The Montagues and Capulets, two families of Renaissance Italy, have hated each other for years, but the son of one family and the daughter of the other fall desperately in love and secretly marry.

Medea

Medea is expelled from the mining region in the Atacama Desert and is given just one day to disappear. But in that single day, she comes up with a plan for revenge. In order to carry out this plan, which will culminate in her murdering her own son, she invokes her innermost strength, summoning the power of the female gender.

Medea

Medea is a powerful witch who gets revenge on her cheating husband Jason by killing their children.

The Return

After twenty years away, Odysseus washes up on the shores of Ithaca, haggard and unrecognizable. The king has finally returned home, but much has changed in his kingdom since he left to fight in the Trojan war.

La Flambée

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Antigone

In Thebes in ancient Greece, King Oedipus kills his father and marries his mother Jocasta, having two sons - Eteocles and Polyneices - and two daughters - Ismene and Antigone. King Oedipus dies a beggar in the exile after gouging out his own eye, and Eteocle agrees to reign in Thebes in alternating years with Polynices. However, he refuses to resign after the first year and Polynieces raises an army and attacks Thebes, and they kill each other. The ruler of Thebes Creon decrees that Eleocles should have an honorable burial while the body of the traitor Polyneices should be left on the battlefield to be eaten by the jackals and vultures. However, Antigone, who was betrothed to Creon's surviving son Haemon, defies Creon's orders and buries her brother. When Creon is reported of the attitude of Antigone, he sentences her to be placed in a tomb alive. Antigone hangs herself in the tomb and Haemon tries to kill his father first and then he kills himself with his sword...

Run, Melos!

The movie tells the story of Melos, a Greek country man that gets arrested and accused of conspiracy against the king. He gets three days to travel to his sister's wedding while Selinentius (Selinae), a genius sculptor that Melos just met stays as a hostage.

Take Me Home

Chorus girl Peggy Lane, finds a small part in a new show for David North, a stages-truck country boy. At rehearsal, David meets Delerys Devore, the show's star, and she quickly offers him a larger part in her act. Quite taken with David, Delerys invites him to her home on the pretext that Peggy will be there; when Peggy does not show up, David leaves, infuriating his hostess. Derelys has Peggy fired the next day, and in reprisal Peggy goads her into a Carmenesque fight backstage just before the show. Derelys is unable to go on stage, and Peggy takes her place, becoming the hit of the show. Peggy and David are later married and give up show business, finding contentment living on a farm.

Night in Paradise

Aesop of fable fame poses as an old man and woos away a princess who wants a king for his gold.

Prometheus

This is a film of the 2013 Cambridge Greek Play production of Prometheus, presented at the Cambridge Arts Theatre.

This Is Your Song

On the night of their wedding anniversary, a bohemian theatre actress and a beatnik inspired writer confront the strife of their relationship, dreams, and the city they once loved.

Lamento

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Razakar

"Razakar" is a period drama set in pre-Bangladesh-separation Pakistan, exploring the political tensions of the time. The story follows Jamal, an aspiring Bengali actor, as he grapples with the challenges posed by his uncompromising director, mirroring the larger socio-political conflicts unfolding around them. Through personal struggles and political subtext, the film raises poignant questions about identity and division.

Night Stage

An actor and a politician start a secret affair and together discover their fetish for having sex in public places. The closer they get to their dream of fame, the more they feel the urge to put themselves at risk.