FADE IN: The open ocean, 1974. Filming is delayed…again. The lead actors—theatre veteran Robert Shaw and young Hollywood hotshots Richard Dreyfuss and Roy Scheider—are crammed into a too-small boat, entirely at the mercy of foul weather and a faulty mechanical co-star. Alcohol flows, egos collide, and tempers flare on a chaotic voyage that just might lead to cinematic magic…if it doesn’t sink them all.
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 25 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. One of the first five episodes also released on terrestrial TV on a 2009 BBC TV series titled "National Theatre Live".
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.
Weller Martin and Fonsia Dorsey, two elderly residents at a nursing home for senior citizens, strike up an acquaintance. Neither seems to have any other friends, and they start to enjoy each other's company. Weller offers to teach Fonsia how to play gin rummy, and they begin playing a series of games that Fonsia always wins. Weller's inability to win a single hand becomes increasingly frustrating to him, while Fonsia becomes increasingly confident. While playing their games of gin, they engage in lengthy conversations about their families and their lives in the outside world. Gradually, each conversation becomes a battle, much like the ongoing gin games, as each player tries to expose the other's weaknesses, to belittle the other's life, and to humiliate the other thoroughly.
After moving to Chicago from the South just as the civil rights movement takes hold, the members of an African American family led by steely matriarch Weedy Warren have different reactions to the social upheaval surrounding them.
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.
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.
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.
Captain's daughter Josephine and common sailor Ralph Rackstraw are in love. However, their relationship is complicated by her arranged marriage to the high-ranking Sir Joseph Porter. A secret about the characters' true identities revealed by Little Buttercup, which leads to a farcical resolution. Performed by the D'Oyly Carte Company for Opera Australia.
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.
The Last of Mrs. Lincoln depicts the final seventeen years of Mary Todd Lincoln's life, following her husband's assassination.
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.
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.
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.
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.
In a remote village in Eastern Europe, around 1900, the young Motl Mendl is entranced by the flickering silent images on his father's cinematograph.
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.".
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.
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.
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.