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.
People spoil things; there are so many of them and the last thing one wants is them traipsing through one’s house. But with the park a jungle and a bath on the billiard table, what is one to do? Dorothy wonders if an attic sale could be a solution.
Academy Award nominee and Tony Award-winner John Lithgow (Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Shrek, 3rd Rock from the Sun) takes the title role in Arthur Wing Pinero’s uproarious Victorian farce, directed by Olivier Award-winner Timothy Sheader (Crazy for You and Into the Woods, Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre, London). In a similar vein to the National Theatre’s smash-hit classic comedies, She Stoops to Conquer and London Assurance, The Magistrate is sure to have audiences doubled up with laughter. When amiable magistrate Posket (John Lithgow) marries Agatha (Olivier Award-winner Nancy Carroll, After the Dance), little does he realise she’s dropped five years from her age – and her son’s. When her deception looks set to be revealed, it sparks a series of hilarious indignities and outrageous mishaps.
Chaos reigns at the natural history museum when night watchman Larry Daley accidentally stirs up an ancient curse, awakening Attila the Hun, an army of gladiators, a Tyrannosaurus rex and other exhibits.
An affluent suburban couple's empty and gin-fueled lives are observed through the eyes of their neglected, eight-year old daughter.
Adaptation of Arthur Miller's play.
Filmed stage production of Molière's comedic play The Miser about the dangers of greed.
Elyot Chase and Amanda Prynne are glamorous, rich, reckless…and divorced. Five years later, their love for one another is unexpectedly rekindled when they take adjoining suites of a French hotel while honeymooning with their new spouses. This chance encounter instantly reignites their passion, and they fling themselves headlong into a whirlwind of love and lust once more, without a thought for partners present or turbulences past. This Chichester Festival Theatre production of Noël Coward’s Privates Lives was filmed live at London's Gielgud Theatre.
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.
The epic love story tells the tragic tale of young Vietnamese bar girl Kim, orphaned by war, who falls in love with American GI Chris — but their lives are torn apart by the fall of Saigon.
As London's East End scrubs up for the coronation, Mr and Mrs Peachum gear up for a bumper day in the beggary business. Keeping tight control of the city's underground – and their daughter’s whereabouts.
This is the story of the shy Mongol boy Temujin who,during the 13th century, becomes the fearless Mongol leader Genghis Khan that unites all Mongol tribes and conquers India,China,Persia,Korea and parts of Rusia,Europe and Middle-East.
Created from five years of interviews with 12 young people from across the UK, Our Generation is a captivating portrait of their journey into adulthood. Often too extraordinary to be fiction, this funny and moving play is for anyone who is – or has ever been – a teenager. Writer Alecky Blythe (London Road) brings her new verbatim play that tells the stories of a generation. Daniel Evans makes this directorial debut at the National Theatre. A production from National Theatre and Chichester Festival Theatre.
A waitress and expert pie-maker dreams of a way out of her small town and rocky marriage.
In a village in a country far away, the community live well and support each other. But when civil war breaks out this idyll of existence is devastated as the community is broken and homes destroyed. We follow the fortunes of a father, mother and their three teenage children – Leto, Mati and Tana – who face this brutal reality together. They are confronted with impossible choices in order to survive. They must leave their homeland and undertake a perilous journey to safer shores. Along the way they will be separated from each other and have to persevere alone.
A mysterious performance troupe led by a Leading Player tells the story of Pippin, a young prince on his search for meaning and significance. Taped at Hamilton Place in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.
This delightful pairing of one-act musicals, one classic and one modern, takes a comical and moving look at the mysteries of love. Act I, based on Schnitzler's The Little Comedy, is a delightful romp through the sexual ennui of turn-of-the-century Vienna, as two wealthy but bored socialites masquerade as impoverished bohemians seeking romance. Act II, based on the Jules Renard play Summer Share, explores modern affection and disaffection as two married couples share a summer house in the Hamptons. An Off-Off-Broadway sensation that successfully moved to Broadway, Romance/Romance is a charming and tuneful small-cast gem, here filmed live for television.
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.
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.
In 1950s America, protests for racial equality erupt in the face of voter suppression. On Broadway, Wiletta Mayer, a talented black actress, begins rehearsals for a new play about racism – written and directed by two white men. When Wiletta finds that her arguments to tell the truth of the story are dismissed, she decides to take action. First staged over 60 years ago, Trouble in Mind is widely considered the masterpiece of actress and playwright Alice Childress - a wry and radical satire of racism in theatre.