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News: National Theatre adds new productions to streaming platform NT at Home

The National Theatre has announced the latest productions to be made available on its National Theatre at Home streaming platform. Launching today, the Young Vic and Joshua Andrews’ production of Tennessee Williams’ timeless masterpiece A Streetcar Named Desire featuring Gillian Anderson as Blanche DuBois, Ben Foster as Stanley and Vanessa Kirby as Stella, the NT’s recent production of Dylan Thomas’ Under Milk Wood with Michael Sheen and Nadia Fall’s verbatim play Home that explores homelessness in the UK featuring Michaela Coel. New productions are added each month and since launching in December 2020, there are now 31 productions available to stream on the platform.

It is also announced today some of the productions that audiences can expect to see on the platform in the coming months. Those productions are confirmed to include Antony & Cleopatra with Ralph Fiennes and Sophie Okonedo in the title roles; Hedda Gabler with Ruth Wilson in the title role; Caryl Churchill’s Top Girls in the Lyttelton theatre from 2019; Sally Cookson’s 2017 production of Peter Pan; Yaël Farber’s Salomé and James Graham’s political drama This House, alongside current NT productions; Kae Tempest’s Paradise with Lesley Sharp and Winsome Pinnock’s Rockets and Blue Lights. Ian McKellen on Stage will also join the platform this autumn for audiences outside the UK and Ireland. It is currently available in the UK and Ireland for Amazon Prime subscribers. Continue reading “News: National Theatre adds new productions to streaming platform NT at Home”

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News: debbie tucker green’s ear for eye gets release date

ear for eye will world premiere at BFI Southbank on 16 October and exclusively the same evening on BBC Two and BBC iPlayer

The 65th BFI London Film Festival in partnership with American Express has announced a groundbreaking joint launch with the BBC for the much anticipated second feature from filmmaker and playwright debbie tucker green. Her latest film, ear for eye, will world premiere at the BFI Southbank on Saturday 16 October and exclusively the same evening on BBC Two and BBC iPlayer. 

tucker green has adapted her highly acclaimed 2018 Royal Court stage production for the screen, with backing from BBC Film, BBC Two and the BFI, awarding funds from the National Lottery. It’s the second feature film from the BAFTA and Olivier Award-winning writer and director.

Continue reading “News: debbie tucker green’s ear for eye gets release date”

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Review: Paradise, National Theatre

Kae Tempest makes a stirring National Theatre debut with Sophocles adaptation Paradise, starring a superb Lesley Sharp 

“If I don’t make it back and they ask what happened, make it a better story than it was“

Tales of the Greeks are seemingly never far from any stage but in adapting Sophocles’ Philoctetes, Kae Tempest has at least tended towards one of the lesser known (at least for me). Paradise pleasingly sees the Olivier Theatre remain in the round and Ian Rickson’s production strikes gold with its all-female cast, catapulting leads Lesley Sharp, Gloria Obianyo and Anastasia Hille towards the divine.

Sharp plays Philoctetes, a renowned warrior abandoned years ago by Odysseus (Hille) after suffering an injury but now finding himself back in demand to help win another war. But years as a hermit have soured the traumatised hero and Odysseus and sidekick Neoptolemus (Obianyo) have their work cut out, trying to bring their former compatriot and his illustrious bow back into the fold. Continue reading “Review: Paradise, National Theatre”

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The National Theatre adds Hansard and Treasure Island to streaming platform National Theatre at Home

The National Theatre has today announced the latest productions to be made available on its streaming platform, National Theatre at Home. Launching today are two National Theatre productions: Hansard, Simon Woods’ witty and devastating play, directed by Simon Godwin (Romeo & Juliet, Twelfth Night); and Treasure Island, adapted by Bryony Lavery (Frozen, Kursk) from the iconic novel by Robert Louis Stevenson and directed by Polly Findlay (Antigone, Beginning). New productions are added each month and since launching in December 2020, there are now 28 productions available to stream on the platform.   Continue reading “The National Theatre adds Hansard and Treasure Island to streaming platform National Theatre at Home”

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News: National Theatre On Sale, July 2021 – January 2022

The National Theatre will return to performances with full capacity audiences from later this month. Additional seating will now be available for performances of After Life from 27 July alongside the previously-announced productions Rockets and Blue Lights in the Dorfman theatre and Paradise in the Olivier theatre, with extra tickets going on sale to the public from Monday 19 July.  

Tickets for The Normal Heart, East is East, Manor and Hex on sale to the public from Friday 30 July. Continue reading “News: National Theatre On Sale, July 2021 – January 2022”

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News: The National Theatre announces 2021-22 programming and launches National Theatre Together

The National Theatre announces new programming and launches a major new campaign for its future, National Theatre Together

The National Theatre has announced its programming until the start of next year with productions on all three South Bank stages as well as three major UK tours, two productions on Broadway, a return to cinemas, and a new feature film to be broadcast on television this autumn. In the week the theatre reopened for audiences again, six new productions were announced, and five productions halted by the pandemic were confirmed to return to the South Bank.  

It has also announced the public launch of National Theatre Together, a new campaign with people at its heart, highlighting the importance of creativity and collaboration with theatre-makers and communities, for young people and audiences. The campaign cements the NT’s commitment to the people of this country and will raise vital funds for the theatre’s ambitious recovery post-pandemic.  Continue reading “News: The National Theatre announces 2021-22 programming and launches National Theatre Together”

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Review: Royal Court’s Living Newspaper #5

Edition #5 of the Royal Court’s Living Newspaper takes a more reflective approach to great effect

“Most people do it. Not me, I have a conscience”

The Royal Court’s Living Newspaper continues with edition #5 which feels a little less reactive to the headlines and a little more reflective on the state of the world as we find it today. It looks back, probing into how our history has shaped us but it also identifies the precipice of the current moment and how, more than ever, so very much is at stake. 

The quiet fury of Dalia Taha’s A Warning takes aim at Israeli border policies through the medium of books, Kayla Meikle’s devastatingly contained performance a real stand out. And Zia Ahmed’s elegiac scene/unscene finds a brutal poetry in its takedown of the systemic racism in the theatrical establishment, skewering good liberal intentions perfectly. Continue reading “Review: Royal Court’s Living Newspaper #5”

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News: writers and cast for Living Newspaper #5

Written by Zia Ahmed, Leo Butler, Guillermo Calderón, Nick Cassenbaum, E.V. Crowe, Maud Dromgoole, Nessah Muthy, Iman Qureshi, Marcelo Dos Santos, Nina Segal, Dalia Taha, Joel Tan and Maya Zbib.

Who has created our country’s past and who is shaping its future? Who gets to have their cake and eat it?

Edition 5 sets out to dismantle histories – be that personal or political – whilst finding allies in bookshop glances, questioning who is desperate for hygge comfort and looking to our comrades and weather reporters for the true future.

As we look back and forward, Edition 5 is a provocation to find joy in the cracks and the spaces left behind. Continue reading “News: writers and cast for Living Newspaper #5”

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TV Review: The Capture

Lia Williams is all kinds of caustic brilliance in conspiracy thriller The Capture

“Accepting you can rarely see the whole picture is part of the job”

I’m working my way through the TV shows I can watch on my free trials on various services, which has lead me to The Capture which aired on BBC1 in late 2019 and somehow completely passed me by. This is particularly egregious since it features Lia Williams the kind of amazing top boss role that makes you wonder why she isn’t better known.

Created, written and directed by Ben Chanan, The Capture takes place in a surveillance state that not too long ago would have been described as a near-future dystopia but now, is just London on a Tuesday. In a society that closely monitors CCTV, so much of justice depends on the reliability of those camera image. But what happens when that confidence is eroded? Continue reading “TV Review: The Capture”

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News: Lockdown Theatre Festival brings four cancelled shows to radio

Plays by writers including Mike Bartlett and EV Crowe that were forced to close early because of the pandemic will be revived on BBC Radio 3 and Radio 4 as part of a festival created by actor Bertie Carvel.

Lockdown Theatre Festival will feature actors including Katherine Parkinson, Rachael Stirling and Nicholas Burns, who will record their lines in isolation, to reimagine their performances for specially created radio versions of the plays.

The plays, which will be broadcast on June 13 and 14, are: The Mikvah Project by Josh Azouz, which had been running at the Orange Tree Theatre, the Lyric Hammermith Theatre’s Love Love Love by Bartlett, Winsome Pinnock’s Rockets and Blue Lights, from the Royal Exchange in Manchester, and Crowe’s Shoe Lady, which was being staged by the Royal Court in London. Continue reading “News: Lockdown Theatre Festival brings four cancelled shows to radio”