National Theatre Live: King Lear

May 1, 2014

3h 25m

★ 7.1

Overview

An aged king decides to divide his kingdom between his three daughters, according to which of them is most eloquent in praising him. His favourite, Cordelia, says nothing. Simon Russell Beale, whose recent appearances at the National include Timon of Athens and Collaborators, takes the title role in Shakespeare’s tragedy.

Genres

Drama

Production Companies

National Theatre

National Theatre Live: King Lear Trailers

Cast

Lear, King of Britain

Simon Russell Beale

Goneril

Kate Fleetwood

Regan

Anna Maxwell Martin

Cordelia

Olivia Vinall

The Duke of Albany

Richard Clothier

The Duke of Cornwall

Michael Nardone

The Earl of Gloucester

Stephen Boxer

The Earl of Kent

Stanley Townsend

Edgar

Tom Brooke

Edmund

Sam Troughton

Oswald

Simon Manyonda

The Fool

Adrian Scarborough

Siegfeld Institute of Music Junior High. An educational institution established for the purpose of training Rohedelstein, the future candidates for the roles of Edels. Two transfer students from Germany are due to enrol in the Junior High. One is Stella Takachiho, whose heritage is descended from Siegfeld's own prestigious family. The other is Shiro Ogami, Stella's exclusive maid. With the pair's transfer comes a drastic change in the fates of fellow Junior High students Ryoko Kobato, Minku Umibe, and Kuina Moriyasu. Liu Mei Fan works hard to meet the expectations of Akira Yukishiro and Michiru Otori, who are searching for a stage girl to carry Siegfeld on their backs. The ones who must entrust it, and the ones who must be entrusted with it—the symbol of the noble king, "Regalia", will end up...

7.8

Spirited Away: Live on Stage

Apr 23, 2023

A young girl, Chihiro, becomes trapped in a strange new world of spirits. When her parents undergo a mysterious transformation, she must call upon the courage she never knew she had to free her family. The film version of the stage production was shot during the play’s 2022 run at the Imperial Theatre in Tokyo.

5.0

National Theatre Live: The Seagull

Nov 3, 2022

Emilia Clarke makes her West End debut as Nina in Anya Reiss’ unique 21st century modernisation of Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull, with direction by Jamie Lloyd.

7.4

Company: A Musical Comedy

Feb 20, 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.

0.0

National Theatre Archive: Death of England

Feb 26, 2020

After the death of his dad, Michael is powerless and angry. In a state of heartbreak, he confronts the difficult truths about his father’s legacy and the country that shaped him. At the funeral, unannounced and unprepared, Michael decides it is time to speak.

0.0

National Theatre Live: 'Master Harold’… and the boys

Nov 19, 2019

St George's Park Tea Room, Port Elizabeth, 1950. On a long rainy afternoon, employees Sam and Willie practise their steps for the finals of the ballroom dancing championship. Hally arrives from school to hide out in his parents’ tea room. These two men have been unlikely best friends to Hally his whole life. But it is apartheid era South Africa: he’s Master Harold, and they are the boys. Tony Award-winning playwright Athol Fugard’s semi-autobiographical and blistering masterwork explores the nature of friendship, and the ways people are capable of hurting even those they love.

0.0

Hemmet

May 17, 1972

A satire of the welfare society showing the mechanical nature of the elderly care.

7.5

National Theatre Live: No Man's Land

Dec 15, 2016

One summer's evening, two ageing writers, Hirst and Spooner, meet in a Hampstead pub and continue their drinking into the night at Hirst's stately house nearby. As the pair become increasingly inebriated, and their stories increasingly unbelievable, the lively conversation soon turns into a revealing power game, further complicated by the return home of two sinister younger men.

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 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.

7.8

Hamlet at Elsinore

Apr 15, 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.

8.8

National Theatre Live: War Horse

Feb 27, 2014

Based on Michael Morpurgo's novel and adapted for the stage by Nick Stafford, War Horse takes audiences on an extraordinary journey from the fields of rural Devon to the trenches of First World War France.

8.0

Othello

May 30, 2020

Filmed version of the 2019 Stratford Festival production.

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).

0.0

Neighbors

Nov 18, 1971

Racial tensions come out of the woodwork when an upper-class white couple puts their suburban home on the market and the listing draws a pair of equally well-to-do African American buyers from Harlem. Fielder Cook directs this Broadway staging of playwright Arkady Leokum's exploration of lingering racial prejudice in 1970s America.

0.0

The Last of Mrs. Lincoln

Sep 16, 1976

The Last of Mrs. Lincoln depicts the final seventeen years of Mary Todd Lincoln's life, following her husband's assassination.

7.0

National Theatre Live: Saint Joan

Feb 16, 2017

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.

0.0

Harold Pinter: A Celebration

Jan 24, 2010

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.

8.0

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

Romance/Romance

Feb 9, 1993

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.

8.5

Death of a Salesman

Jan 9, 2000

An aging salesman is fired from his job after a long career in it. Broken, without much to look forward to, he tries reconnecting with his wife and kids who he had always put down as he dedicated himself to work.