Embark on a journey from Jamaica to Britain, through the Second World War to 1948 – the year the HMT Empire Windrush docked at Tilbury, England. The play follows three intricately connected stories. Hortense yearns for a new life away from rural Jamaica, Gilbert dreams of becoming a lawyer, and Queenie longs to escape her Lincolnshire roots.
Working (1982)
This musical adaptation of the Studs Terkel book examines the average worker's viewpoint--showing that he or she is anything but average. Based on a series of interviews with real working people--construction workers, waitresses, firemen, secretaries, and cleaning women, Working is both an exploration of the individuals' occupations and a lament for lost hopes and dreams.
National Theatre Live: All About Eve (2019)
The story of Margo Channing. Legend. True star of the theatre. The spotlight is hers, always has been. But now there’s Eve. Her biggest fan. Young, beautiful Eve. The golden girl, the girl next door. But you know all about Eve…don’t you…?
The Sorrows of Gin (1979)
An affluent suburban couple's empty and gin-fueled lives are observed through the eyes of their neglected, eight-year old daughter.
Black Terror (NaN)
Fifty years after Richard Wesley's original production of Black Terror, Richard Lawson directs a bi-coastal cast of revolutionaries on a daunting mission to free their people. As the Black Comrades Keusi, M'Balia, Geronimo, and Ahmed fight on the edge of life and death, the divide between them intensifies and widens.
Hairspray Live! (2016)
A teenage girl living in Baltimore in the early 1960s dreams of appearing on a popular TV dance show.
Rodgers and Hammerstein's Carousel: Live from Lincoln Center (2013)
Transferring the setting of a brooding Hungarian play, Carousel, to a remote fishing village, shaping their vision around themes of brutality, poverty and disappointment, Rodgers and Hammerstein composed some of the most glorious music ever written for the stage.
National Theatre Live: Coriolanus (2014)
When an old adversary threatens Rome, the city calls once more on her hero and defender: Coriolanus. But he has enemies at home too. Famine threatens the city, the citizens’ hunger swells to an appetite for change, and on returning from the field Coriolanus must confront the march of realpolitik and the voice of an angry people.
Miss Saigon : 25th Anniversary Performance (2016)
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.
Hamlet at Elsinore (1964)
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.
National Theatre Live: The Lehman Trilogy (2019)
On a cold September morning in 1844 a young man from Bavaria stands on a New York dockside. Dreaming of a new life in the new world. He is joined by his two brothers and an American epic begins. 163 years later, the firm they establish – Lehman Brothers – spectacularly collapses into bankruptcy, and triggers the largest financial crisis in history.
Company: A Musical Comedy (2008)
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.
National Theatre Live: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (2012)
Christopher, fifteen years old, has an extraordinary brain – exceptional at maths while ill-equipped to interpret everyday life. When he falls under suspicion of killing Mrs Shears' dog Wellington, he records each fact about the event in the book he is writing to solve the mystery of the murder. But his detective work, forbidden by his father, takes him on a frightening journey that upturns his world.
National Theatre Live: Death of England: Delroy (2020)
Michael Balogun plays Delroy with 'firecracker energy’ in this new work by Clint Dyer and Roy Williams, which explores a Black working class man searching for truth and confronting his relationship with Great Britain.
Awake and Sing! (1972)
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.
Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol (2020)
The timeless tale of Ebenezer Scrooge comes to thrilling new life as Tony winner Jefferson Mays plays over 50 roles in a virtuosic masterclass of a performance that must be seen to be believed.
Waitress: The Musical (2023)
A waitress and expert pie-maker dreams of a way out of her small town and rocky marriage.
National Theatre Live: Hamlet (2010)
A 2010 broadcast of Hamlet returns to cinemas as part of the NT's 50th anniversary celebrations. Following his celebrated performances at the National Theatre in Burnt by the Sun, The Revenger's Tragedy, Philistines and The Man of Mode, Rory Kinnear plays Hamlet in a dynamic new production of Shakespeare’s complex and profound play about the human condition, directed by Nicholas Hytner. He is joined by Clare Higgins (Gertrude), Patrick Malahide (Claudius), David Calder (Polonius), James Laurenson (Ghost/Player King) and Ruth Negga (Ophelia).
National Theatre Live: Blues for an Alabama Sky (2022)
New York, 1930. Following a decade of creative explosion, the Harlem Renaissance is starting to feel the bite of the Great Depression. In the face of hardship and dwindling opportunity, Angel and her friends battle to keep their artistic dreams alive. But, when Angel falls for a stranger from Alabama, their romance forces the group to make good on their ambitions, or give in to the reality of the time. Lynette Linton directs a startling revival of this extraordinary play by Pearl Cleage.
National Theatre Archive: Ugly Lies the Bone (2017)
‘Beauty is but skin deep, ugly lies the bone; beauty dies and fades away, but ugly holds its own.’ After three tours in Afghanistan, Jess finally returns to Florida. In a small town on the Space Coast, as the final shuttle is about to launch, Jess must confront her scars – and a home that may have changed even more than her. Experimenting with a pioneering virtual reality therapy, she builds a breath-taking new world where she can escape her pain. There, she begins to restore her relationships, her life and, slowly, herself.