National Theatre Live: The Seagull

Back in the kitchen of the Gabriel family, the country is now in the midst of the general election for President. In the course of one evening in the house they grew up in, history (both theirs and our country's), money, politics, family, art, and culture are chopped up and mixed together, while a meal is made around the kitchen table.

Eight months after we first meet the Gabriels, Patricia, the family matriarch, joins her children and daughters-in-law as they prepare a meal from the past and consider the future of their country, town and home. Paying tribute to the difficult year behind them, the Gabriels compare notes on the search for empathy and authenticity at a time when the game seems rigged and the rules are forever changing.

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.

After the death of his dad, Michael is powerless and angry. In a state of heartbreak, he confronts the difficult truths about his father’s legacy and the country that shaped him. At the funeral, unannounced and unprepared, Michael decides it is time to speak.

St George's Park Tea Room, Port Elizabeth, 1950. On a long rainy afternoon, employees Sam and Willie practise their steps for the finals of the ballroom dancing championship. Hally arrives from school to hide out in his parents’ tea room. These two men have been unlikely best friends to Hally his whole life. But it is apartheid era South Africa: he’s Master Harold, and they are the boys. Tony Award-winning playwright Athol Fugard’s semi-autobiographical and blistering masterwork explores the nature of friendship, and the ways people are capable of hurting even those they love.

The Bergers, a blue-collar Jewish family living in an overstuffed tenement and undone by the Depression, struggle through hard times and dream of a better future in this 1972 production of Clifford Odets' pungent play. Personalities and politics clash as Odets' mélange of characters try to survive on pennies a day. Walter Matthau plays cynical World War I amputee Moe Axelrod, and Leo Fuchs portrays the family's iron-willed leftist grandfather.

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

A witch hunt is beginning in Arthur Miller's captivating parable of power with Erin Doherty (The Crown) and Brendan Cowell (Yerma). Raised to be seen but not heard, a group of young women in Salem suddenly find their words have an almighty power. As a climate of fear, vendetta and accusation spreads through the community, no one is safe from trial. Lindsey Turner (Hamlet) directs this contemporary new staging, design by Tony award winner Es Devlin. Captured live from the Olivier stage of the national theater.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Hardcastle, a man of substance, looks forward yo acquainting his daughter with his old pal's son with a view to marriage. But thanks to playboy Lumpkin, he's mistaken by his prospective son-in-law Marlow for an innkeeper, his daughter for the local barmaid. The good news is, while Marlow can barely speak to a woman of quality he's a charmer with those of a different stamp. And so, as Hardcastle's indignation intensifies, Miss Hardcastle's appreciation for her misguided suitor soars. Misdemeanours multiply, love blossoms, mayhem ensues. One of the great, generous-hearted and ingenious comedies of the English language, Goldsmith's She Stoops to Conquer offers a celebration of chaos, courtship and the dysfunctional family.

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.

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.

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.