National Theatre Live: King Lear
Genres
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.
Details
Budget
$0
Revenue
$0
Runtime
205 min
Release Date
2014-05-01
Status
Released
Original Language
English
Vote Count
8
Vote Average
7.1
Simon Russell Beale
Lear, King of Britain
Kate Fleetwood
Goneril
Anna Maxwell Martin
Regan
Olivia Vinall
Cordelia
Richard Clothier
The Duke of Albany
Michael Nardone
The Duke of Cornwall
Stephen Boxer
The Earl of Gloucester
Stanley Townsend
The Earl of Kent
Tom Brooke
Edgar
Sam Troughton
Edmund
Simon Manyonda
Oswald
Adrian Scarborough
The Fool
Paapa Essiedu
The Duke of Burgundy
Daniel Millar
Curan
Colin Haigh
Old Man
8.7
National Theatre Live: Hansard
It's a summer's morning in 1988 and Tory politician Robin Hesketh has returned home to the idyllic Cotswold house he shares with his wife of 30 years, Diana. But all is not as blissful as it seems. Diana has a stinking hangover, a fox is destroying the garden, and secrets are being dug up all over the place. As the day draws on, what starts as gentle ribbing and the familiar rhythms of marital scrapping quickly turns to blood-sport.
2019-11-07 | en
8.4
National Theatre Live: Present Laughter
As he prepares to embark on an overseas tour, star actor Garry Essendine’s colourful life is in danger of spiralling out of control. Engulfed by an escalating identity crisis as his many and various relationships compete for his attention, Garry’s few remaining days at home are a chaotic whirlwind of love, sex, panic and soul-searching.
2019-11-28 | en
8.0
National Theatre Live: The Habit of Art
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.
2010-04-22 | en
7.4
National Theatre Live: Amadeus
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, a rowdy young prodigy, arrives in Vienna, the music capital of the world – and he’s determined to make a splash. Awestruck by his genius, court composer Antonio Salieri has the power to promote his talent or destroy his name. Seized by obsessive jealousy he begins a war with Mozart, with music, and ultimately, with God.
2017-02-02 | en
0.0
National Theatre Live: Dixon and Daughters
Mary has just been released from prison. She wants to come home and forget all about it but Briana has other ideas. Over a tumultuous two days a family is forced to confront not just their past but themselves. Because even if you refuse to hear the truth, the truth doesn’t go away. Róisín McBrinn returns to Clean Break (Favour) to direct this powerful story of family and forgiveness by Deborah Bruce (The House They Grew Up In). A co-production from National Theatre and Clean Break.
2023-04-14 | en
8.5
Death of a Salesman
Willy Loman is an over-the-hill salesman who faces a personal turning point when he loses his job and attempts to make peace with his family: Willy's long-suffering wife Linda, and Biff and Happy, his troubled sons and his life.
2000-01-09 | en
9.0
National Theatre Live: Salomé
An occupied desert nation. A radical from the wilderness on hunger strike. A girl whose mysterious dance will change the course of the world. This charged retelling turns the infamous biblical tale on its head, placing the girl we call Salomé at the centre of a revolution. Internationally acclaimed director Yaël Farber (Les Blancs, Hamlet) draws on multiple accounts to create her urgent, hypnotic production.
2017-06-22 | en
8.6
National Theatre Live: Angels In America — Part One: Millennium Approaches
The National Theatre's live theatrical production of Tony Kushner's two-part play 'Angels In America' about New Yorkers grappling with the AIDS crisis during the mid-1980s.
2017-07-20 | en
8.6
National Theatre Live: Angels In America — Part Two: Perestroika
America in the mid-1980s. In the midst of the AIDS crisis and a conservative Reagan administration, New Yorkers grapple with life and death, love and sex, heaven and hell. This new staging of Tony Kushner's multi-award winning two-part play, Angels In America: A Gay Fantasia On National Themes, is directed by Olivier and Tony award winning director Marianne Elliott.
2017-07-27 | en
8.5
National Theatre Live: Hedda Gabler
Hedda and Tesman have just returned from their honeymoon and the relationship is already in trouble. Trapped but determined, Hedda tries to control those around her, only to see her own world unravel.
2017-03-09 | en
8.7
National Theatre Live: Twelfth Night
A ship is wrecked on the rocks. Viola is washed ashore but her twin brother Sebastian is lost. Determined to survive on her own, she steps out to explore a new land. So begins a whirlwind of mistaken identity and unrequited love. The nearby households of Olivia and Orsino are overrun with passion. Even Olivia's upright housekeeper Malvolia is swept up in the madness. Where music is the food of love, and nobody is quite what they seem, anything proves possible.
2017-04-06 | en
6.1
National Theatre Live: Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead
Against the backdrop of Hamlet, two hapless minor characters, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, take centre stage. As the young double act stumble their way in and out of the action of Shakespeare’s iconic drama, they become increasingly out of their depth as their version of the story unfolds.
2017-04-20 | en
6.6
National Theatre Live: Obsession
Gino is a drifter, down-at-heel and magnetically handsome. At a road side restaurant he encounters husband and wife, Joseph and Hanna. Irresistibly attracted to each other, Gino and Hanna begin a fiery affair and plot to murder her husband. But, in this chilling tale of passion and destruction, the crime only serves to tear them apart.
2017-05-11 | en
9.0
National Theatre Live: Yerma
A woman is driven to the unthinkable by her desperate desire to have a child in Simon Stone’s radical production of Lorca’s achingly powerful masterpiece.
2017-08-31 | en
8.0
The Gin Game
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.
1981-04-21 | en
0.0
Harold Pinter: A Celebration
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.
2010-01-24 | en
10.0
National Theatre Live: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
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.
2012-09-06 | en
7.0
RSC Live: The Tempest
On a distant island a man waits. Robbed of his position, power and wealth, his enemies have left him in isolation. But this is no ordinary man, and this no ordinary island. Prospero is a magician, able to control the very elements and bend nature to his will. When a sail appears on the horizon, he reaches out across the ocean to the ship that carries the men who wronged him. Creating a vast magical storm he wrecks the ship and washes his enemies up on the shore. When they wake they find themselves lost on a fantastical island where nothing is as it seems.
2017-01-11 | en
0.0
Neighbors
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.
1971-11-18 | en
7.8
Hamlet at Elsinore
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.
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