
12 Jun 2014

National Theatre Live : A Small Family Business
Alan Ayckbourn's riotous exposure of entrepreneurial greed returns to the National Theatre, where it premiered in 1987, winning the Evening Standard Theatre Award for Best Play.
Since the 1930s, the legendary family-run Hotel Messina has been visited by artists, celebrities and royalty. When the current owner’s daughter falls for a dashing young soldier, the hallways are ringing with the sound of wedding bells. However, not all the guests are in the mood for love, and a string of deceptions soon surround not only the young couple, but also the steadfastly single Beatrice and Benedick.
Beatrice
Hero
Benedick
Dogberry
Claudio
Don John
Antonia
Leonato
Don Pedro
12 Jun 2014
Alan Ayckbourn's riotous exposure of entrepreneurial greed returns to the National Theatre, where it premiered in 1987, winning the Evening Standard Theatre Award for Best Play.
06 Apr 2017
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.
20 Apr 2017
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.
12 Sep 2019
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.
22 Apr 2010
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.
20 Oct 1962
Povel Ramel's 1962 show as filmed for television. This time the usual gang of four is joined by promising young comedian Hasse Alfredsson.
03 Jun 2023
The Queen of the Night enlists a handsome prince named Tamino to rescue her beautiful kidnapped daughter, Princess Pamina. Aided by the lovelorn bird hunter Papageno and a magical flute that holds the power to change the hearts of men, young Tamino embarks on a quest for true love, leading to the evil Sarastro's temple where Pamina is held captive.
01 Mar 2012
Separated at birth, two sets of twins collide in the same city for one crazy day, as multiple mistaken identities lead to confusion on a grand scale.
10 Dec 1996
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.
01 Dec 2011
John Hodge's Collaborators centers on an imaginary encounter between Joseph Stalin and the playwright Mikhail Bulgakov.
06 Oct 2011
The Kitchen, Arnold Wesker’s "extraordinary black comedy," is directed by Bijan Sheibani and features an ensemble cast of 29 actors. The production is set in a restaurant in 1950s London.
14 Oct 2010
The innovative interweaving of romance and math was conceived. The 2008 Olivier Award winner for Best New Play, it has toured the world and was recently performed in New York as part of the Lincoln Center Festival.
24 Jun 2010
Grace has agreed to marry Sir Harcourt in return for his financial support of her family. At a house party in her father's place, Harcourt's son Charles also falls in love with Grace. When his father appears on the scene, he has to convince him that there is a case of mistaken identity and he is somebody else. Then Lady Gay Spanker, a married woman also visiting at the house, is persuaded by Charles to seduce his father and thus divert his attention from Grace. Much confusion and scheming ensues.
07 Apr 2003
This powerfully bittersweet comedy follows the relationship that develops between nursing home residents Fonsia (Mary Tyler Moore) and Weller (Dick Van Dyke) during a series of gin games in which their ailments, misfortunes and losses are exposed in funny, honest and increasingly heated moments.
20 Feb 2008
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.
07 Dec 2017
1850, and Europe’s most feared terrorist is hiding in Dean Street, Soho. Broke, restless and horny, the thirty-two-year-old revolutionary is a frothing combination of intellectual brilliance, invective, satiric wit, and child-like emotional illiteracy. Creditors, spies, rival revolutionary factions and prospective seducers of his beautiful wife all circle like vultures. His writing blocked, his marriage dying, his friend Engels in despair at his wasted genius, his only hope is a job on the railway. But there’s still no one in the capital who can show you a better night on the piss than Karl Heinrich Marx.
16 Feb 2017
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.
01 Jan 1989
Cissi lives in an expensive apartment in Östermalm, in order to pay for it she keeps two lovers, an ad man and a fishmonger, who write her checks for her various expenses. Everything goes smoothly until the two men show up at the same time.
11 Aug 2005
Eliza Doolittle is a young flower seller with an unmistakable Cockney accent which keeps her in the lower rungs of Edwardian society. When Professor Henry Higgins tries to teach her how to speak like a proper lady, an unlikely friendship begins to flourish.
30 Jun 2016
Val Kilmer, master of reinvention, becomes Mark Twain, in a funny, moving, contemporary and reflective performance, based on the life of the man who was Samuel Clemens and on his writings as Mark Twain: his thoughts on politics, his family, his faith and God… Twain shows the greatness of his incomparable wit.