National Theatre Live: The Brightening Air

Oct 14, 2025

2h 11m

★ 0.0

How much of living is really just forgetting?

Overview

The family home is more than merely a building. It can be a destination of pilgrimage, an inherited investment, a repository of memory or even magic. And, for brother and sister Stephen and Billie, home is all they have. Mucking along in their decaying farmhouse, they're doing just fine. That is, until the arrival of an ex-clergyman uncle with an unscrupulous plan, a sister-in-law seeking a miracle, and a prodigal brother hell-bent on trouble.

Genres

Drama

Comedy

National Theatre Live: The Brightening Air Trailers

Cast

Stephen

Brian Gleeson

Billie

Rosie Sheehy

Lydia

Hannah Morrish

Dermot

Chris O'Dowd

Brendan

Eimhin Fitzgerald Doherty

Freya

Aisling Kearns

Elizabeth

Derbhle Crotty

Pierre

Sean McGinley

Eight months after we first meet the Gabriels, Patricia, the family matriarch, joins her children and daughters-in-law as they prepare a meal from the past and consider the future of their country, town and home. Paying tribute to the difficult year behind them, the Gabriels compare notes on the search for empathy and authenticity at a time when the game seems rigged and the rules are forever changing.

8.5

The Gin Game

Apr 21, 1981

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.

0.0

The Gabriels: Election Year in the Life of One Family, Play One: Hungry

Mar 22, 2017

Hungry is the first in a three-play cycle introducing us to the Gabriels of Rhinebeck, New York. These three plays unfold in real time and track the lives of the Gabriels throughout the coming presidential election year. To the rhythm of peeling, chopping and mixing, Hungry places us in the center of the Gabriel’s kitchen. The family discusses their lives and disappointments, and the world at large and nearby. As they struggle against the fear of being left behind, the family attempts to find resilience in the face of loss.

0.0

The Gabriels: Election Year in the Life of One Family, Play Two: What Did You Expect?

Mar 23, 2017

Back in the kitchen of the Gabriel family, the country is now in the midst of the general election for President. In the course of one evening in the house they grew up in, history (both theirs and our country's), money, politics, family, art, and culture are chopped up and mixed together, while a meal is made around the kitchen table.

0.0

National Theatre Live: London Tide

Oct 17, 2024

A storm rages and, in the darkest part of the night, a body is pulled from the swirling river. Across the city, two young women confront an uncertain future.

8.8

Macbeth

Feb 5, 2025

Fearless and unforgettably creepy. This high-concept production, filmed live at London’s Donmar Warehouse, stars the formidable talents of David Tennant and Cush Jumbo in Shakespeare’s most infamous tragedy.

4.7

Smalltown Boys

Nov 5, 2022

A young man seems to be dreaming of a reality different from the business he is about to take over and the married life that goes with it; he is drawn to the spicy life of a queer vaudeville troupe performing in his village.

7.0

We Want You To Win

Jul 16, 1997

A Kuwaiti comedy play starring Dawood Hussain & Intesar Al Sharrah.

7.8

National Theatre Live: Hamlet

Dec 9, 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).

8.0

Back to Back

Nov 2, 1959

These dueling one-act comedies highlight the work of playwright John Mortimer. In "The Dock Brief," an ill-prepared attorney is put to the test when his client confesses to killing his wife. In "What Shall We Tell Caroline?" a father with good intentions tries to protect his wife and daughter from the bad things in life.

0.0

Al Bab Ya Shabab

Dec 27, 2000

A satirical Kuwaiti comedy play, focusing on young people, their needs and the problems they are going through in their daily lives, and sometimes their rebellion against society to pay attention to their problems and seek a solution to them.

6.9

Likely Consequence

Jan 1, 1992

Filmed performance of Yang's one-act two-character play which shifts back and forth from comedy to much darker tones as a married couple try to figure out what to do with the body of a man the wife has killed in their kitchen.

7.7

National Theatre Live: Fleabag

Sep 12, 2019

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.

9.2

Palace 176

Oct 14, 1986

A comedy known and loved by all, under the interpretation of the most famous actors of the Albanian National Theatre.

8.0

The Shark Is Broken

Oct 16, 2025

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.

8.0

National Theatre Live: The Habit of Art

Apr 22, 2010

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".

0.0

Roland Magdane : La vie à deux c'est merveilleux

Sep 13, 2023

No overview available.

5.8

Geliebte Hochstaplerin

Dec 16, 1961

Roberto Bolle smuggles himself as a stowaway on an ocean liner that of Hamburg gen New York sets sail. On board is also his lover Barbara Shadwell, whom he wants to marry, but who, at the request of her mother, the syrup millionaire Ceila Shadwell, should marry the oatmeal millionaire David.