National Theatre Live: Othello

Performing from within the walls of a deconsecrated Manchester church, Kenneth Branagh takes the lead role in this ambitious production of William Shakespeare's tragic tale of ambition and treachery.

Childlike in his innocence but grotesque in form, Frankenstein’s bewildered creature is cast out into a hostile universe by his horror-struck maker. Meeting with cruelty wherever he goes, the friendless Creature, increasingly desperate and vengeful, determines to track down his creator and strike a terrifying deal. Urgent concerns of scientific responsibility, parental neglect, cognitive development and the nature of good and evil are embedded within this thrilling and deeply disturbing tale.

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.

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.

This absorbing 1976 production of dramatist Sidney Kingsley's historical play centers on the formative days of the United States and the disputes between founding fathers Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton. Although the two men greatly respect each other, the deep-seated clash in their ideologies engenders conflict just as the fledgling country is beginning to take root.

For sixty years, Elizabeth II has met each of her twelve Prime Ministers in a weekly audience at Buckingham Palace, a meeting like no other in British public life, it is private.

In June 2009, a group Britain's leading actors gathered for one night only to perform a celebration of the work of Harold Pinter at the National Theatre, directed by Ian Rickson. The team who made the acclaimed Harold Pinter documentaries for BBC's Arena was there to record this unique performance.

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.

The story takes place entirely in a bedroom dominated by a couple's four-poster bed, taking them through fifty years of marriage, through happiness and sorrow, through good times and bad, through childbirth, parenthood, and the eventual sadness from the absence of their children. In the end, they face the future together, while remembering their past.

Britain is in crisis. An ineffectual Queen Cymbeline rules over a divided dystopian Britain. Consumed with grief at the death of two of her children, Cymbeline's judgment is clouded. When Innogen, the only living heir, marries her sweetheart Posthumus in secret, an enraged Cymbeline banishes him. Behind the throne, a power-hungry figure plots to seize power by murdering them both. In exile Innogen's husband is tricked into believing she has been unfaithful to him and in an act of impulsive jealousy begins a scheme to have her murdered. Warned of the danger, Innogen runs away from court in disguise and begins a journey fraught with danger that will eventually reunite Cymbeline with a long-lost heir and reconcile the young lovers.

A screenwriter gets conned out of selling a script to a Hollywood producer by his brother, who pitches his own idea for a movie. This video recording of the 1982 Steppenwolf Theatre Company production was later broadcast by PBS.

Josie Rourke directs Gemma Arterton as Joan of Arc in Bernard Shaw's electrifying classic. Performed at the Donmar Warehouse, and part of the NT Live series of broadcasts.

Hedda and Tesman have just returned from their honeymoon and the relationship is already in trouble. Trapped but determined, Hedda tries to control those around her, only to see her own world unravel.

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.

Gino is a drifter, down-at-heel and magnetically handsome. At a road side restaurant he encounters husband and wife, Joseph and Hanna. Irresistibly attracted to each other, Gino and Hanna begin a fiery affair and plot to murder her husband. But, in this chilling tale of passion and destruction, the crime only serves to tear them apart.

An occupied desert nation. A radical from the wilderness on hunger strike. A girl whose mysterious dance will change the course of the world. This charged retelling turns the infamous biblical tale on its head, placing the girl we call Salomé at the centre of a revolution. Internationally acclaimed director Yaël Farber (Les Blancs, Hamlet) draws on multiple accounts to create her urgent, hypnotic production. Filmed at the Olivier Theatre, National Theatre in London, UK.

The National Theatre's live theatrical production of Tony Kushner's two-part play 'Angels In America' about New Yorkers grappling with the AIDS crisis during the mid-1980s.

America in the mid-1980s. In the midst of the AIDS crisis and a conservative Reagan administration, New Yorkers grapple with life and death, love and sex, heaven and hell. This new staging of Tony Kushner's multi-award winning two-part play, Angels In America: A Gay Fantasia On National Themes, is directed by Olivier and Tony award winning director Marianne Elliott.

A woman is driven to the unthinkable by her desperate desire to have a child in Simon Stone’s radical production of Lorca’s achingly powerful masterpiece.