Wuthering Heights - Bristol Old Vic (2021)

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.

National Theatre Live: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

Christopher, fifteen years old, has an extraordinary brain – exceptional at maths while ill-equipped to interpret everyday life. When he falls under suspicion of killing Mrs Shears' dog Wellington, he records each fact about the event in the book he is writing to solve the mystery of the murder. But his detective work, forbidden by his father, takes him on a frightening journey that upturns his world.

Memphis

Memphis is set in the places where rock and roll was born in the 1950s: the seedy nightclubs, radio stations and recording studios of the musically-rich Tennessee city. With an original score, it tells the fictional story of DJ Huey Calhoun, a good ole' local boy with a passion for R&B music and Felicia Farrell, an up-and-coming black singer that he meets one fateful night on Beale Street. Despite the objections of their loved ones (Huey's close-minded mama and Felicia's cautious brother, a club owner), they embark on a dangerous affair. As their careers rise, the relationship is challenged by personal ambition and the pressures of an outside world unable to accept their love. Originally shown in select theatres, then broadcast as an episode of the PBS series "Great Performances" (season 39, episode 11).

National Theatre Live: The Motive and the Cue

In 1964, Richard Burton, newly married to Elizabeth Taylor, is to play the title role in an experimental new Broadway production of Hamlet under Sir John Gielgud’s exacting direction. But as rehearsals progress, two ages of theatre collide and the collaboration between actor and director soon threatens to unravel.

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.

RSC Live: 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.

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.

Peter Pan

The stage musical Peter Pan starring Cathy Rigby has toured the world to great acclaim. An adaptation of the famous 1954 musical directed by Jerome Robbins and starring Mary Martin, this new version is lasting proof that J.M. Barrie's tale of the boy who would never grow up is one of the kingpins of family entertainment. All the elements are in good form for this video production shot at the Mirada Theater in 2000 for the A&E Network. Some new songs have been added to the fabulous Moose Charlap-Carolyn Leigh score (which includes "Tender Shepherd," "I Gotta Crow," "I'm Flying," and "I Won't Grow Up"). But the biggest asset to this production are the spectacular flying sequences: Peter even soars over the audience at times. Martin was a stronger actress in a close-up, but Rigby is magical with her athleticism and spark, most notably in a percussion-filled song and dance number "Ugh-a-Wug.".

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.

Kiss Me, Kate

A pair of divorced actors are brought together to participate in a musical version of The Taming of the Shrew. Of course, the couple seem to act a great deal like the characters they play, and they must work together when mistaken identities get them mixed up with the mafia.

Annie Live!

Annie, the beloved seven-time Tony Award-winning Broadway sensation, comes to life like never before in a live musical event starring Harry Connick, Jr., Nicole Scherzinger, Tituss Burgess, Megan Hilty and Taraji P. Henson, with newcomer Celina Smith in the title role of Annie. The iconic musical follows smart and spirited little orphan Annie, whose whole life changes when larger-than-life billionaire Daddy Warbucks takes her away from an orphanage run by the mean Miss Hannigan. One of Broadway's all-time biggest hits, the stage production features such popular songs as "Tomorrow" and "It's the Hard Knock Life," which are adored by generations of audiences around the world.

The Will Rogers Follies: A Life In Revue

The Will Rogers Follies is a musical with a book by Peter Stone, lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green, and music by Cy Coleman. It focuses on the life and career of famed humorist and performer Will Rogers, using as a backdrop the Ziegfeld Follies, which he often headlined, and describes every episode in his life in the form of a big production number. The Rogers character also performs rope tricks in between scenes. The revue contains snippets of Rogers' famous homespun style of wisdom and common sense and tries to convey the personality of this quintessentially American figure whose most famous quote was "I never met a man I didn't like."

Things I Know to Be True

As beautifully touching as it is funny and bold, Things I Know To Be True tells the story of a family and marriage through the eyes of four grown siblings struggling to define themselves beyond their parents’ love and expectations. Parents Bob and Fran have worked their fingers to the bone and with their four children grown and ready to fly the nest it might be time to relax and enjoy the roses. But the changing seasons bring home some shattering truths. Featuring Frantic Assembly’s celebrated physicality, and co-directed by Frantic Assembly’s Tony and Olivier Award nominated Artistic Director Scott Graham and State Theatre Company’s Artistic Director Geordie Brookman, Things I Know To Be True is a complex and intense study of the mechanics of a family that is both poetic and brutally frank.

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.

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.

Giselle

The peasant girl Giselle discovers the true identity of her lover Albrecht – and that he is promised to another. Giselle kills herself. Her soul enters the ranks of the Wilis – shades of young women who died before their wedding day. All men that come across their path are compelled to dance themselves to death, and Albrecht falls into their trap. Giselle’s intercession saves Albrecht and releases her soul from the Wilis’ power.

Genghis Khan

TV-recording of the famous Swedish comedy play Djingis Khan, first performed in 1954.

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.

Indecent

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.

Legally Blonde: The Musical

Fashionable sorority queen Elle Woods has it all, but, she wants nothing more than to be Mrs. Warner Huntington III. But he dumps her before heading to Harvard Law School. Elle rallies all of her resources and gets into Harvard, determined to win him back. While there, she figures out that there is more to herself than just good looks.

Cats

"Jellicle" cats join for a Jellicle ball where they rejoice with their leader, Old Deuteronomy. One cat will be chosen to go to the "Heavyside Layer" and be reborn.

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: Cyrano de Bergerac

Fierce with a pen and notorious in combat, Cyrano almost has it all - if only he could win the heart of his true love Roxane. There’s just one big problem: he has a nose as huge as his heart. Will a society engulfed by narcissism get the better of Cyrano - or can his mastery of language set Roxane’s world alight?

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: 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: 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.

Cyrano de Bergerac

Cyrano has a prominent nose but also a gift with words by which he helps handsome Christian to conquer Roxane. Also in love with the girl he chooses not to reveal to her that every word of Christian comes out of his own heart. In cinema, this ROSTAND classic filmed live from the Comédie Française.

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.

RSC Live: Macbeth

Returning home from battle, the victorious Macbeth meets three witches on the heath. Driven by their disturbing prophecies, he sets out on the path to murder. This contemporary production of Shakespeare’s darkest psychological thriller marks both Christopher Eccleston’s RSC debut and the return of Niamh Cusack to the company.

Macbeth

Blood will have blood. Unbridled ambition, supernatural forces, and murderous desires reign supreme in Shakespeare’s most poetic examination of evil. When three witches tell Macbeth that he will become King of Scotland, he plots with his wife to attain the title through an assassination; a bloody act that gives him his crown and sends him careening down the path of his own undoing.

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.

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: I'm Not Running

Pauline Gibson has spent her life as a doctor, the inspiring leader of a local health campaign. When she crosses paths with her old boyfriend, a stalwart loyalist in Labour Party politics, she’s faced with an agonising decision. What’s involved in sacrificing your private life and your piece of mind for something more than a single issue? Does she dare?

National Theatre Live: Paradise

When a young soldier appears, his hope of escape comes with suspicion. And as an old enemy also emerges, he is faced with an even greater temptation: revenge.

National Theatre Live: The Fifth Step

After years in the twelve steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, James becomes a sponsor to newcomer Luka. The pair bond over black coffee, trade stories and build a fragile friendship out of their shared experiences. But as Luka approaches step five – the moment of confession – dangerous truths emerge, threatening the trust on which both of their recoveries depend.

National Theatre Live: The Hard Problem

Acclaimed playwright Tom Stoppard (Shakespeare in Love, Arcadia, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead) returns to the National Theatre with his highly-anticipated new play The Hard Problem, directed by Nicholas Hytner (Othello, Hamlet, One Man, Two Guvnors). Hilary, a young psychology researcher at a brainscience institute, is nursing a private sorrow and a troubling question at work, where psychology and biology meet. If there is nothing but matter, what is consciousness? This is ‘the hard problem’ which puts Hilary at odds with her colleagues who include her first mentor Spike, her boss Leo and the billionaire founder of the institute, Jerry. Is the day coming when the computer and the fMRI scanner will answer all the questions psychology can ask? Meanwhile Hilary needs a miracle, and she is prepared to pray for one.

Everybody's Talking About Jamie

Jamie is 16 and lives on a council estate in Sheffield. Jamie doesn't quite fit in. Jamie is terrified about the future. Jamie is going to be a sensation. Supported by his brilliant loving mum and surrounded by his friends, Jamie overcomes prejudice, beats the bullies and steps out of the darkness, into the spotlight. Sixteen: the edge of possibility. Time to make your dreams come true.

The Phantom of the Opera at the Royal Albert Hall

A disfigured musical genius, hidden away in the Paris Opera House, terrorises the opera company for the unwitting benefit of a young protégée whom he trains and loves. The 25th anniversary of the first public performance of Phantom of the Opera was celebrated with a grand performance at the Royal Albert Hall in London.

Good Night, and Good Luck

Livestreamed from the penultimate show at the Winter Garden Theatre in New York City, this stage adaptation of George Clooney's 2005 film follows the story of journalist Edward R. Murrow's stand against Senator Joseph McCarthy's anti-communist witch-hunts in the early 1950s.

Itsi Bitsi

Two young progressive people live together in the early 1960s. Their lives revolve around political activities, anti-nuclear actions, love, travel, music, drugs and poetry. And other issues of importance. That they believe in. But in spite of all these motions and movements they drift apart. And their story ends badly. One of the two, Eik Skaløe, the first beat poet singer in Danish, committed suicide in India 1968. The other, Iben Nagel Rasmussen, an Odin Teatret actress since 1966, reflects on her life today and, through the characters of her shows, compares it with visions and the events of that time.

National Theatre Live: Top Girls

Now hiring: top girls wanted for prestige positions. Must be self-motivated go-getters with an appetite for success. No timewasters. Marlene is the first woman to head the Top Girls employment agency. But she has no plans to stop there. With Maggie in at Number 10 and a spirit of optimism consuming the country, Marlene knows that the future belongs to women like her.

The Crucible

Richard Armitage stars in Yael Farber's powerful production of Arthur Miller's timeless witch hunt parable.

Den goda människan i Sezuan

When the gods appear in disguise the only person who shows them hospitality is the young girl Shen Te and for this she is awarded by them. After a while she finds her new life has also brought new problems.

Hamlet

From The Public Theater’s Free Shakespeare in the Park at The Delacorte Theater in Central Park, experience this Shakespearean classic directed by Tony Award winner Kenny Leon featuring Tony Award nominee Ato Blankson-Wood (“Slave Play”) in the title role and Solea Pfeiffer as Ophelia (“Hadestown”).

Revue Starlight ―The LIVE― #2 Transition

After the events of Revue Starlight ―The LIVE― #1 revival, Seiran General Arts Institute challenges Seisho Music Academy to a revue with the right to perform the play "Starlight" at stakes. Who will win this Cultural Exchange Program?

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: wonder.land

Inspired by Lewis Carroll's iconic story, this coming-of-age adventure explores the blurred boundaries between our online and offline lives. Combining live theatre and digital technology in dazzling new ways, wonder.land is brought to life on stage by an extraordinary creative team

National Theatre Live: Dara

1659 Mughal, India. Two brothers, Dara and Aurangzeb, are both heirs to the Muslim empire. Dara, the crown prince, has the love of the people – and of his emperor father – but younger brother Aurangzeb holds a different vision for India’s future. Now they fight ferociously for succession.

True West

A screenwriter gets conned out of selling a script to a Hollywood producer by his brother, who pitches his own idea for a movie. The damaged relationship between two estranged brothers striving for success is deconstructed in this comedic and tension-filled production at the Tricycle Theatre, London, captured for screen by Digital Theatre.

Candide

The innocent Candide discovers that human beings aren't all they are cracked up to be and ultimately focuses on building his own life on his own terms.

Hamlet: Bristol Old Vic Live

'Must I remember?' Hamlet's father is dead. His mother has remarried. He is alone with his thoughts. Then, he speaks. Haunted by grief, and with his world spinning violently out of control, Hamlet has to make some decisions: forget or remember; live or die.

Emily

The imagined life of one of the world’s most famous authors, Emily Brontë, as she finds her voice and writes the literary classic Wuthering Heights. Explore the relationships that inspired her – her raw, passionate sisterhood with Charlotte and Anne; her first aching, forbidden love for Weightman and her care for her maverick brother whom she idolises.

National Theatre Live: Treasure Island

It’s a dark, stormy night. The stars are out. Jim, the inn-keeper’s granddaughter, opens the door to a terrifying stranger. At the old sailor’s feet sits a huge sea-chest, full of secrets. Jim invites him in – and her dangerous voyage begins. Robert Louis Stevenson’s story of murder, money and mutiny is brought to life on the Olivier stage in a thrilling new adaptation by Bryony Lavery.

Anything Goes

When the S.S. American heads out to sea, etiquette and convention head out the portholes as two unlikely pairs set off on the course to true love... proving that sometimes destiny needs a little help from a crew of singing sailors, a comical disguise and some good old-fashioned blackmail. This hilarious musical romp across the Atlantic, directed by the multi-award-winning Broadway director and choreographer Kathleen Marshall, features Cole Porter’s joyful score, including "I Get A Kick Out of You," "You’re the Top" and the show-stopping "Anything Goes."