On a quest to be truly alive, Pinocchio leaves Geppetto’s workshop with Jiminy Cricket in tow. Their electrifying adventure takes them from alpine forests to Pleasure Island to the bottom of the ocean. This spectacular new production brings together the director of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child and the writer of Matilda the Musical.
For the first time on stage, featuring unforgettable music and songs from the Walt Disney film including I’ve Got No Strings, Give a Little Whistle and When You Wish upon a Star in dazzling new arrangements, Pinocchiocomes to life as never before.
Creatives
Directed by John Tiffany
Written by Dennis Kelly,
Songs and score from the Walt Disney film by Leigh Harline, Ned Washington and Paul J. Smith, newly adapted by Martin Lowe
Design and puppet co-design by Bob Crowley
Lighting design by Paule Constable
Music supervision and orchestrations by Martin Lowe
Director Anthony Lau, designer Georgia Lowe & choreographer Aline David reveal how Man and Boy came to life at the National Theatre.
Stream now on National Theatre at Home on ntathome.com/man-and-boy
In his National Theatre debut, director Anthony Lau (The Crucible,) brings a sharp, contemporary interpretation to Terence Rattigan’s tale of paternity and corruption.
Featuring Ben Daniels (The Normal Heart) and Laurie Kynaston (Long Day’s Journey into Night) as father and son, in what Time Out describes as ‘the performance of the year’, this critically acclaimed production is available to stream online on National Theatre at Home.
A production from National Theatre.
Photography: Manuel Harlan
Set and Costume Designer: Georgia Lowe
The Creative Team
Anthony Lau directs in his National Theatre debut, bringing a sharp contemporary edge to Rattigan's razor-sharp play set against the glamour and impending collapse of 1930s New York. Joining Daniels and Kynaston are Phoebe Campbell as Carol Penn, Isabella Laughland as Countess Antonescu, Malcolm Sinclair as Mark Herries, Leo Wan as David Beeston, and Nick Fletcher as Sven Johnson. The creative team includes set and costume designer Georgia Lowe, lighting designer Elliot Griggs, composer Angus MacRae, and sound designer Giles Thomas.
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We believe that great theatre sparks imagination and brings people together.
Every day we strive to make the world a better place through theatre; entertaining and inspiring audiences around the world, using our creativity, expertise and unique reach.
You’ll find us in theatres. In cinemas. In schools. And online.
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About the author
Terrence Rattigan was a British dramatist and screenwriter. He was one of England's most popular mid-20th-century dramatists. He wrote The Winslow Boy (1946), The Browning Version (1948), The Deep Blue Sea (1952) and Separate Tables (1954), among many others.
In 1990, the British Library acquired Rattigan's papers consisting of 300 volumes of correspondence and papers relating to his prose and dramatic works.
There was a revival of The Deep Blue Sea in 1993, at the Almeida Theatre, London, directed by Karel Reisz and starring Penelope Wilton. A string of successful revivals followed, including The Winslow Boy at the Chichester Festival Theatre in 2001 (with David Rintoul, and subsequently on tour in 2002 with Edward Fox), Man and Boy at the Duchess Theatre, London, in 2005, with David Suchet as Gregor Antonescu, and In Praise of Love at Chichester, and Separate Tables at the Royal Exchange, Manchester, in 2006. His play on the last days of Lord Nelson, A Bequest to the Nation, was revived on Radio 3 for Trafalgar 200, starring Janet McTeer as Lady Hamilton, Kenneth Branagh as Nelson, and Amanda Root as Lady Nelson.
Thea Sharrock directed his rarely seen After the Dance in the summer of 2010 at London's Royal National Theatre. She directed a major new production of Rattigan's final and also rarely seen play Cause Célèbre at The Old Vic in March 2011 as part of The Terence Rattigan Centenary year celebrations. As well as this, Trevor Nunn marked the occasion with a West End revival of Flare Path at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket, between March and June 2011, starring Sienna Miller, James Purefoy and Sheridan Smith.
In 2011, the BBC presented The Rattigan Enigma by Benedict Cumberbatch, a documentary on Rattigan's life and career presented by actor Benedict Cumberbatch, who, like Rattigan, attended Harrow.
A new screen version of The Deep Blue Sea, directed by Terence Davies, was released in 2011, starring Rachel Weisz and Tom Hiddleston. In 2026, London's Royal National Theatre staged a revival of Man and Boy, directed by Anthony Lau and starring Ben Daniels and Laurie Kynaston.
#ManAndBoy #NationalTheatre #NTatHome #TerenceRattigan #BenDaniels
Ncuti Gatwa. Silk jacquard. Green carnations. The NT's costume department unpacks the queer joy, Victorian codes & stunning craft behind The Importance of Being Earnest, streaming on ntathome.com
A Trivial Comedy for Serious People
Being sensible can be excessively boring. At least Jack thinks so.
While assuming the role of dutiful guardian in the country, he lets loose in town under a false identity. Meanwhile, his friend Algy takes on a similar facade.
Unfortunately, living a double life has its drawbacks, especially when it comes to love.
Hoping to impress two eligible ladies, the gentlemen find themselves caught in a web of lies they must carefully navigate.
Max Webster (Donmar’s Macbeth; Life of Pi) directs a joyful and flamboyant reimagining of Oscar Wilde’s most celebrated comedy. Olivier Award-winner Sharon D Clarke (Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom; Doctor Who) is joined by Ncuti Gatwa (Doctor Who; Sex Education) and Hugh Skinner (W1A; Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again) in this hilarious story of identity, impersonation and romance.
A production from National Theatre.
Ten metres of silk jacquard. Eighty to ninety hours of hand craftsmanship. A shade of pink and a green carnation carrying a secret message that Oscar Wilde himself would have recognised immediately. This is what it takes to dress Algernon Moncrieff — and in this intimate behind-the-scenes film, the National Theatre's costume department opens its workrooms to reveal exactly how one of the most talked-about costumes of the season came to life.
The Vision: Queer Joy, Victorian Codes & Sensuality Over Structure
The production's guiding principle is pleasure — and the costume team have taken that mandate with joyful seriousness. "We want to give our actors and our audience as much delicious pleasure as possible in what we're making," says the design team. "It's storytelling, really."
From the very first scene, the production announces itself boldly: Ncuti Gatwa appears in a gorgeous flowing pink dress — a dream sequence costume that sits somewhere between the late Victorian era and an entirely imagined world of beauty and desire. "It's more like an expressive or emotional kind of outfit," explains the costume supervisor. "It's designed specially for his body — to work with his femininity, to play with the currents in his persona."
The colour alone — that specific, luminous shade of "Barbie popping pink" — required the full resources of the NT's in-house textile studio. Beginning with white silk jacquard, the team worked through multiple dye samples before landing on exactly the right tone for Ncuti's skin. The result: ten metres of custom-dyed silk, hand-cut, boned, bustled, and adorned with silk organza, tiny crystals, and hand-made silk flowers that catch the light at a distance and glow from across the Olivier stage.
The Craft: 80 Hours, Pattern by Pattern
The film takes viewers inside the workroom at every stage of the process — from the first cutting of pattern pieces to the final fitting. The dress is, in construction, four separate elements: bodice, skirt, petticoat, and bum roll, all eventually joined together. The bodice is boned with spiral bones to follow the slightly curved boning channels. The silk organza lining gives lift to the bustle without adding weight, while hidden net ensures the silhouette will survive the rigours of a long run.
Every seam, every pocket, every pattern match has been considered with extraordinary care. The jacket — in a gorgeous vivid green fabric inspired by Victorian aniline dyes, the revolutionary pigments that brought electric colour to the 19th century — is pad-stitched by hand at the lapels, drafted from scratch to a late 19th-century silhouette and then modernised.
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0:00 Intro
0:28 Four Weeks Before Opening
5:24 Two Weeks Before Opening
8:58 One Week Before Opening
10:24 The Language of Flowers
11:30 Ending
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We believe that great theatre sparks imagination and brings people together.
Every day we strive to make the world a better place through theatre; entertaining and inspiring audiences around the world, using our creativity, expertise and unique reach.
You’ll find us in theatres. In cinemas. In schools. And online.
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#ImportanceOfBeingEarnest #NcutiGatwa #NationalTheatre #CostumeDesign #OscarWilde #TheatreCraft #BehindTheScenes
Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Sophie Okonedo, Francesca Mills, Indira Varma & Madeleine Worrall. Five iconic women. Five unforgettable performances. The National Theatre's greatest leading ladies — all in one place.
This compilation celebrates five of the most extraordinary women to have taken centre stage at the National Theatre — five performances, five characters, five utterly different ways of being alive in front of an audience. From Greek tragedy to Gothic romance, from a one-woman comedy that broke box office records to Shakespeare's most complex heroines, this is a love letter to the leading lady in all her forms.
The Performances
00:00 Phoebe Waller-Bridge - Fleabag
Written and performed by Phoebe Waller-Bridge and directed by Vicky Jones, Fleabag is a rip-roaring look at some sort of woman living her sort of life — witty, filthy, and supreme. Following a box-office record-breaking run in cinemas in 2019, the one-woman show became a global phenomenon — and at its centre, Waller-Bridge's performance: confessional, funny, heartbroken, and utterly, dangerously direct. The New York Times called her "a name to reckon with". They were not wrong.
01:30 Indira Varma as Lady Macbeth
Indira Varma brought her formidable stage presence to the role of Lady Macbeth in a production that placed the audience inside the minds of the Macbeths, asking: are we ever really responsible for our actions? One of the most psychologically complex female roles in the Shakespeare canon — and in Varma's hands, one of the most human.
03:20 Francesca Mills as Ophelia in Hamlet
Francesca Mills won the Ian Charleson Award for her performance as Hermia at Shakespeare's Globe before being cast as Ophelia in Robert Hastie's Hamlet at the National Theatre in 2025. Her Ophelia provides the heart of an insightful production — a performance of extraordinary warmth, physical intelligence, and devastating emotional truth. A woman who feels everything too deeply, played by an actor who holds nothing back.
4:24 Sophie Okonedo as Cleopatra in Antony & Cleopatra
Simon Godwin directs Ralph Fiennes and Sophie Okonedo as Shakespeare's famous fated couple in his great tragedy of politics, passion, and power. Sophie Okonedo is electrifying as Cleopatra — playing her like a larger-than-life force of nature, yet also an extremely flawed individual: temperamental, jealous, and prone to histrionics. Okonedo makes it work — playing the most complex female character in Shakespeare's entire output. A performance that, in the words of the Evening Standard, has "a simmering chemistry and an air of danger."
5:18 Madeleine Worrall as Jane Eyre
Directed by Sally Cookson, Jane Eyre at the National Theatre starred Madeleine Worrall in the title role — staunch, fiery, tracing the character from uncontrolled childhood passion to adult interiority. The production was a total thrill-ride — an incredibly inventive staging on a bare-bones stage, with Worrall carrying the entire production with enormous emotional range, playing Jane from newborn baby through to adulthood.
Theatre has always belonged to the women who refuse to be small. Fleabag. Lady Macbeth. Ophelia. Cleopatra. Jane Eyre. Five characters from wildly different worlds, united by the same irreducible quality: a refusal to be defined, contained, or silenced by the world around them. And five actors who brought them to life on one of the world's greatest stages with courage, intelligence, and complete, unguarded commitment.
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We believe that great theatre sparks imagination and brings people together.
Every day we strive to make the world a better place through theatre; entertaining and inspiring audiences around the world, using our creativity, expertise and unique reach.
You’ll find us in theatres. In cinemas. In schools. And online.
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Discover our work: https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/
Broadcast to cinemas worldwide: https://www.ntlive.com/
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#LeadingLadies #NationalTheatre #PhoebeWallerBridge #SophieOkonedo #FrancescaMills #NTatHome #WomenInTheatre
Look a little closer. Rachel Adedeji performs 'Our Lady of the Underground' in @Hadestown — the 8x Tony Award-winning musical. West End's Lyric Theatre, booking to June 2027.
Head to the National Theatre website for more info and tickets. → nationaltheatre.org.uk/productions/hadestown/
Write what you've never told anyone." David Eldridge reveals the inspiration, craft & secrets behind END at the National Theatre — and the trilogy of a lifetime. Writer's Portrait.
"I wanted it to be almost cosmic — to really be about some of the brass tacks of what it is to be human." David Eldridge has spent 30 years writing plays. And END, the final instalment of his trilogy for the National Theatre, is his most ambitious, most personal, and most profoundly felt work yet. In this intimate Writer's Portrait, he talks with extraordinary candour about the birth of the trilogy, the 18 months it took to find the idea for End, the devastating simplicity of its starting point — and what drove him to write a play about dying that is, above all else, about living.
The Trilogy: Beginning, Middle, End
END is the third play in a trilogy that has unfolded over years, each one examining a key crunch moment in a long-term relationship. Beginning opens with a woman at a party's end saying to a man she has just met: "I wanted you to stay." Middle opens ten years later with a wife saying to her husband: "I'm not sure I love you anymore." And End — ten years further still — opens with a man saying to his long-term partner: "I don't want any more treatment."
Each play, Eldridge explains, can be experienced individually. But together, they work like a triptych — three panels of a single painting, each incomplete without the others. He knew he couldn't write Middle until he had an idea for End. And finding that idea took eighteen months. "When I had it," he says, "I thought — oh, thank God. Now I can write the other one."
The Challenge of End
The central difficulty was this: Eldridge did not want to write a deathbed play. The other two plays, he says, are so full of life — and End had to be full of life too. The breakthrough came when he found the right starting place: not how you die, but how you choose to live the rest of your life. And in a marriage, who that life belongs to.
Clive Owen plays Alfie — and Eldridge's favourite moment in the play is not a line of dialogue, but an action. Alfie hears news from his wife that is totally devastating. And he lets his walking stick fall. It hits the floor with a small clatter. "When I watched that in the theatre," Eldridge says quietly, "it's a devastating moment. You can feel the ripple of it."
On Becoming a Writer
Eldridge traces his path to playwriting back to a GCSE drama class, a teacher called Ruth Pryor, and an improvisation exercise he had never tried before — and discovered he was good at. Overnight, he went from being a history and politics person to someone who wanted to do drama and nothing else. The school play that year was The Crucible. He would never have gone near it otherwise.
Now a part-time lecturer at Birkbeck, he returns year after year to the same question from students: "I don't know what to write about." His answer is always the same: "What do you know that you have never told someone?" The thing you have kept secret — for a good reason. Write that. "There's something about telling a secret, about being unburdened," he says. "When you finally have the opportunity to come out with it — it's very liberating."
On Craft and Belief
Thirty years in, the blank page is still terrifying — and rightly so, he says. He describes himself as an actor's writer: someone who writes in three dimensions, trusting that the text will only fully reveal itself when actors are on their feet in a real space. And his most consistent piece of advice to himself and to others is the hardest to hear: write the best thing you can, because you believe in it. Not for money. Not for recognition. Just: write the best thing you bloody can. "I wish someone had told me that," he says. "And I wish, when people did, that I'd listened."
#DavidEldridge #WritersPortrait #NationalTheatre #Playwriting #END #NewWriting #TheatreEducation #nationaltheatreathome
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We believe that great theatre sparks imagination and brings people together.
Every day we strive to make the world a better place through theatre; entertaining and inspiring audiences around the world, using our creativity, expertise and unique reach.
You’ll find us in theatres. In cinemas. In schools. And online.
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Discover our work: https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/
Broadcast to cinemas worldwide: https://www.ntlive.com/
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About David Eldridge
Hamlet is streaming worldwide from 18 June on ntathome.com
'The play's the thing'
Something is rotten in the state of Denmark. Are you watching closely?
Olivier Award-winner Hiran Abeysekera (The Father and the Assassin, Life of Pi) is Hamlet in this fearless, contemporary take on Shakespeare’s famous tragedy.
Trapped between duty and doubt, surrounded by power and privilege, young Prince Hamlet dares to ask the ultimate question–you know the one.
National Theatre Deputy Artistic Director, Robert Hastie (Standing at the Sky’s Edge, Operation Mincemeat) directs this sharp, stylish and darkly funny reimagining.
A production from National Theatre.
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We believe that great theatre sparks imagination and brings people together.
Every day we strive to make the world a better place through theatre; entertaining and inspiring audiences around the world, using our creativity, expertise and unique reach.
You’ll find us in theatres. In cinemas. In schools. And online.
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Discover our work: https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/
Broadcast to cinemas worldwide: https://www.ntlive.com/
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About the Author
William Shakespeare was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon" or simply "the Bard". His extant works, including collaborations, consist of some 39 plays, 154 sonnets, three long narrative poems and a few other verses, some of uncertain authorship. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright. Shakespeare remains arguably the most influential writer in the English language, and his works continue to be studied and reinterpreted
#williamshakespeare #theatre #nationaltheatre #nationaltheatrelive #london #fullshow #trailer #trailers #teaser #Broadway #WestEnd #shakespeare
Inter Alia is currently streaming internationally on ntathome.com. Streaming from 7 July in the UK.
Jessica Parks is a judge, a mother, a wife, a friend. Her career exists inter alia (among other things). How will one unthinkable event pull into question all aspects of her life?
Following the global phenomenon, Prima Facie, Suzie Miller and Justin Martin reunite with this searing examination of modern motherhood and masculinity. This ‘simply superb’ (Financial Times) play features Olivier award-winning Rosamund Pike (Gone Girl, Saltburn) and music from Erin Le Count and Jakwob.
This ★★★★★ ‘raw, nuanced must-see' (Radio Times) is available to stream internationally. It will be streaming from 7 July in the UK.
Currently playing a strictly limited West End run at the Wyndham's Theatre until 20 June.
A production from National Theatre.
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We believe that great theatre sparks imagination and brings people together.
Every day we strive to make the world a better place through theatre; entertaining and inspiring audiences around the world, using our creativity, expertise and unique reach.
You’ll find us in theatres. In cinemas. In schools. And online.
--
Discover our work: https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/
Broadcast to cinemas worldwide: https://www.ntlive.com/
Streaming online: https://www.ntathome.com/
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About Inter Alia
A searing new play from the team behind Prima Facie
Jessica Parks is smart, compassionate, a true maverick at the top of her career as an eminent London Crown Court Judge. At work she’s changing and challenging the system one case at a time. But behind the robe, Jessica is a karaoke fiend, a loving wife and a supportive parent.
While managing the impossible juggling act faced by every working mother, an event threatens to throw her life completely off balance. Can she hold her family upright?
Rosamund Pike (Saltburn) makes her National Theatre debut as Jessica. Writer Suzie Miller and director Justin Martin reunite following their global phenomenon Prima Facie with this searing examination of modern masculinity and motherhood.
About Suzie Miller
Suzie Miller is a contemporary international playwright, screenwriter and author, drawn to complex human stories often exploring injustice. Her plays have been produced in over 40 productions around the world and won multiple prestigious awards. Her one-woman stage play ‘Prima Facie’ won an Olivier Award for Best New Play and an Olivier and Tony Award for actress Jodie Comer who performed in the West End and Broadway productions. It has been translated into over 20 languages, produced all over the world and also published as a novel in various countries.
Miller is currently under commission with several new plays, alongside film and television projects and ‘Inter Alia’, starring Rosamund Pike.
#suziemiller #rosamundpike #interalia #nationaltheatre #nationaltheatrelive #livetheater
Watch now, Tom Hiddleston, Kate Fleetwood, Asa Butterfield & more read poetry live on the National Theatre stage, Allie Esiri hosts and Chris Riddell draws.
This event was performed on the Olivier stage, National Theatre, London on Friday 17 March 2023.
Words have always been one of humanity's most powerful tools — for beauty, for solidarity, for refusing to look away. In this extraordinary evening of poetry on the stage of the National Theatre, some of Britain's most beloved actors gather to read poems that speak to the enduring strength of the human spirit, in a night of live performance that is as moving as anything the NT's stages have witnessed.
Hosted by anthologist and poet Allie Esiri — compiler of the celebrated A Poem for Every Day of the Year — the evening brings together Tom Hiddleston, Helena Bonham Carter, Asa Butterfield, Ṣọpẹ́ Dìrísù, Kate Fleetwood, and Dária Plahtíy for an hour of poetry that reminds us, above all else, why words matter. While the poets read, illustrator and Children's Laureate Chris Riddell drew live on stage — creating artwork in real time as each poem filled the air.
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We believe that great theatre sparks imagination and brings people together.
Every day we strive to make the world a better place through theatre; entertaining and inspiring audiences around the world, using our creativity, expertise and unique reach.
You’ll find us in theatres. In cinemas. In schools. And online.
--
Discover our work: https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/
Broadcast to cinemas worldwide: https://www.ntlive.com/
Streaming online: https://www.ntathome.com/
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About the National Theatre Archive
The National Theatre’s Archive holds all the organisation’s creative, technical and business records. It covers the movement to found the theatre and documents every production from opening night in 1963 right up to the present day.
About Allie Esiri
Allie Esiri is one of Britain's most passionate and imaginative advocates for poetry — the curator behind some of the most loved poetry anthologies of recent years.
#nationaltheatre #nationaltheatreathome #poetryfroverydayoftheyear #learning #artsed #artseducation #poetry #poetrylovers #poetry #poem #poems #TomHiddleston #HelenaBonhamCarter #NationalTheatre #Poetry #AllieEsiri
1930s New York. An empire crumbling. A father with nowhere left to run. Ben Daniels & Laurie Kynaston in Terence Rattigan's Man and Boy. Stream now on National Theatre at Home on ntathome.com/man-and-boy
In his National Theatre debut, director Anthony Lau (The Crucible,) brings a sharp, contemporary interpretation to Terence Rattigan’s tale of paternity and corruption.
Featuring Ben Daniels (The Normal Heart) and Laurie Kynaston (Long Day’s Journey into Night) as father and son, in what Time Out describes as ‘the performance of the year’, this critically acclaimed production is available to stream online on National Theatre at Home.
A production from National Theatre.
Photography: Manuel Harlan
Set and Costume Designer: Georgia Lowe
The Creative Team
Anthony Lau directs in his National Theatre debut, bringing a sharp contemporary edge to Rattigan's razor-sharp play set against the glamour and impending collapse of 1930s New York. Joining Daniels and Kynaston are Phoebe Campbell as Carol Penn, Isabella Laughland as Countess Antonescu, Malcolm Sinclair as Mark Herries, Leo Wan as David Beeston, and Nick Fletcher as Sven Johnson. The creative team includes set and costume designer Georgia Lowe, lighting designer Elliot Griggs, composer Angus MacRae, and sound designer Giles Thomas.
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We believe that great theatre sparks imagination and brings people together.
Every day we strive to make the world a better place through theatre; entertaining and inspiring audiences around the world, using our creativity, expertise and unique reach.
You’ll find us in theatres. In cinemas. In schools. And online.
--
Discover our work: https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/
Broadcast to cinemas worldwide: https://www.ntlive.com/
Streaming online: https://www.ntathome.com/
Subscribe on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/NationalTheatre
National Theatre Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nationaltheatre
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About the author
Terrence Rattigan was a British dramatist and screenwriter. He was one of England's most popular mid-20th-century dramatists. He wrote The Winslow Boy (1946), The Browning Version (1948), The Deep Blue Sea (1952) and Separate Tables (1954), among many others.
In 1990, the British Library acquired Rattigan's papers consisting of 300 volumes of correspondence and papers relating to his prose and dramatic works.
There was a revival of The Deep Blue Sea in 1993, at the Almeida Theatre, London, directed by Karel Reisz and starring Penelope Wilton. A string of successful revivals followed, including The Winslow Boy at the Chichester Festival Theatre in 2001 (with David Rintoul, and subsequently on tour in 2002 with Edward Fox), Man and Boy at the Duchess Theatre, London, in 2005, with David Suchet as Gregor Antonescu, and In Praise of Love at Chichester, and Separate Tables at the Royal Exchange, Manchester, in 2006. His play on the last days of Lord Nelson, A Bequest to the Nation, was revived on Radio 3 for Trafalgar 200, starring Janet McTeer as Lady Hamilton, Kenneth Branagh as Nelson, and Amanda Root as Lady Nelson.
Thea Sharrock directed his rarely seen After the Dance in the summer of 2010 at London's Royal National Theatre. She directed a major new production of Rattigan's final and also rarely seen play Cause Célèbre at The Old Vic in March 2011 as part of The Terence Rattigan Centenary year celebrations. As well as this, Trevor Nunn marked the occasion with a West End revival of Flare Path at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket, between March and June 2011, starring Sienna Miller, James Purefoy and Sheridan Smith.
In 2011, the BBC presented The Rattigan Enigma by Benedict Cumberbatch, a documentary on Rattigan's life and career presented by actor Benedict Cumberbatch, who, like Rattigan, attended Harrow.
A new screen version of The Deep Blue Sea, directed by Terence Davies, was released in 2011, starring Rachel Weisz and Tom Hiddleston. In 2026, London's Royal National Theatre staged a revival of Man and Boy, directed by Anthony Lau and starring Ben Daniels and Laurie Kynaston.
#ManAndBoy #NationalTheatre #NTatHome #TerenceRattigan #BenDaniels
Hugh Jackman, Audra McDonald, Sara Bareilles & more. Six show-stopping musical theatre vocals — all streaming now on National Theatre at Home. This is what world-class sounds like.
Stream these hit musicals now at ntathome.com
What does world-class musical theatre sound like? It sounds like this. This compilation brings together six of the most extraordinary vocal performances available to stream right now on National Theatre at Home — spanning Oklahoma!, Waitress, My Fair Lady, Next to Normal, Hex, and The Little Big Things — performed by some of the biggest names in musical theatre on both sides of the Atlantic. A love letter to the human voice, and to the art form that uses it better than any other.
Where to Watch These Shows
Every production featured in this compilation is available to stream in full on National Theatre at Home — the NT's streaming platform bringing world-class theatre directly to your screen. New titles are added monthly.
#NationalTheatreAtHome #MusicalTheatre #HughJackman #AudraMcDonald #NationalTheatre
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We believe that great theatre sparks imagination and brings people together.
Every day we strive to make the world a better place through theatre; entertaining and inspiring audiences around the world, using our creativity, expertise and unique reach.
You’ll find us in theatres. In cinemas. In schools. And online.
--
Discover our work: https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/
Broadcast to cinemas worldwide: https://www.ntlive.com/
Streaming online: https://www.ntathome.com/
Subscribe on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/NationalTheatre
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National Theatre Live Twitter: https://twitter.com/NTLive
Director Anthony Lau, designer Georgia Lowe & choreographer Aline David reveal how Man and Boy came to life at the National Theatre.
Stream now on National Theatre at Home on ntathome.com/man-and-boy
In his National Theatre debut, director Anthony Lau (The Crucible,) brings a sharp, contemporary interpretation to Terence Rattigan’s tale of paternity and corruption.
Featuring Ben Daniels (The Normal Heart) and Laurie Kynaston (Long Day’s Journey into Night) as father and son, in what Time Out describes as ‘the performance of the year’, this critically acclaimed production is available to stream online on National Theatre at Home.
A production from National Theatre.
Photography: Manuel Harlan
Set and Costume Designer: Georgia Lowe
The Creative Team
Anthony Lau directs in his National Theatre debut, bringing a sharp contemporary edge to Rattigan's razor-sharp play set against the glamour and impending collapse of 1930s New York. Joining Daniels and Kynaston are Phoebe Campbell as Carol Penn, Isabella Laughland as Countess Antonescu, Malcolm Sinclair as Mark Herries, Leo Wan as David Beeston, and Nick Fletcher as Sven Johnson. The creative team includes set and costume designer Georgia Lowe, lighting designer Elliot Griggs, composer Angus MacRae, and sound designer Giles Thomas.
--
We believe that great theatre sparks imagination and brings people together.
Every day we strive to make the world a better place through theatre; entertaining and inspiring audiences around the world, using our creativity, expertise and unique reach.
You’ll find us in theatres. In cinemas. In schools. And online.
--
Discover our work: https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/
Broadcast to cinemas worldwide: https://www.ntlive.com/
Streaming online: https://www.ntathome.com/
Subscribe on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/NationalTheatre
National Theatre Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nationaltheatre
National Theatre Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nationaltheatre
National Theatre TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@nationaltheatre
National Theatre Twitter: https://twitter.com/NationalTheatre
National Theatre Live Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ntlive
National Theatre Live Twitter: https://twitter.com/NTLive
About the author
Terrence Rattigan was a British dramatist and screenwriter. He was one of England's most popular mid-20th-century dramatists. He wrote The Winslow Boy (1946), The Browning Version (1948), The Deep Blue Sea (1952) and Separate Tables (1954), among many others.
In 1990, the British Library acquired Rattigan's papers consisting of 300 volumes of correspondence and papers relating to his prose and dramatic works.
There was a revival of The Deep Blue Sea in 1993, at the Almeida Theatre, London, directed by Karel Reisz and starring Penelope Wilton. A string of successful revivals followed, including The Winslow Boy at the Chichester Festival Theatre in 2001 (with David Rintoul, and subsequently on tour in 2002 with Edward Fox), Man and Boy at the Duchess Theatre, London, in 2005, with David Suchet as Gregor Antonescu, and In Praise of Love at Chichester, and Separate Tables at the Royal Exchange, Manchester, in 2006. His play on the last days of Lord Nelson, A Bequest to the Nation, was revived on Radio 3 for Trafalgar 200, starring Janet McTeer as Lady Hamilton, Kenneth Branagh as Nelson, and Amanda Root as Lady Nelson.
Thea Sharrock directed his rarely seen After the Dance in the summer of 2010 at London's Royal National Theatre. She directed a major new production of Rattigan's final and also rarely seen play Cause Célèbre at The Old Vic in March 2011 as part of The Terence Rattigan Centenary year celebrations. As well as this, Trevor Nunn marked the occasion with a West End revival of Flare Path at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket, between March and June 2011, starring Sienna Miller, James Purefoy and Sheridan Smith.
In 2011, the BBC presented The Rattigan Enigma by Benedict Cumberbatch, a documentary on Rattigan's life and career presented by actor Benedict Cumberbatch, who, like Rattigan, attended Harrow.
A new screen version of The Deep Blue Sea, directed by Terence Davies, was released in 2011, starring Rachel Weisz and Tom Hiddleston. In 2026, London's Royal National Theatre staged a revival of Man and Boy, directed by Anthony Lau and starring Ben Daniels and Laurie Kynaston.
#ManAndBoy #NationalTheatre #NTatHome #TerenceRattigan #BenDaniels
Siobhán McSweeney takes us backstage at Playboy of the Western World at the National Theatre Meet Me at Stage Door gives exclusive access to actors' dressing rooms and pre-show routines — filmed in the final moments before the call to start the show.
Balaclavas, beatled linen, bog oak jewellery, a hag stone, frankincense, a champagne club on Saturday nights, and a dedication to Clive Owen — this is Siobhán McSweeney's pre-show routine, and it is absolutely, completely, gloriously her own. In this irresistible episode of the National Theatre's Meet Me at Stage Door series, we follow Siobhán McSweeney — playing the Widow Quinn in J.M. Synge's The Playboy of the Western World at the National Theatre — from the Yellow Brick Road corridor to the wings, via the best dressing room view in the building, a costume that looks like Vivienne Westwood but isn't, and a very firm position on lucky objects.Funny, frank, fiercely intelligent, and with a story about Olivia Colman wandering into the communal dressing room on England People Very Nice that you will not soon forget — this is backstage theatre at its absolute best.
About the show: https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/productions/the-playboy-of-the-western-world/
Meet Me at Stage Door is a compelling and intimate documentary series from the National Theatre that pulls back the curtain on one of theatre's most charged and private spaces — the dressing room. Going beyond the polished performances seen from the auditorium, this unique series offers exclusive access to actors in the final, unguarded moments before they step into the lights, capturing the rituals, nerves, focus, and humanity that live just out of sight of the audience.
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We believe that great theatre sparks imagination and brings people together.
Every day we strive to make the world a better place through theatre; entertaining and inspiring audiences around the world, using our creativity, expertise and unique reach.
You’ll find us in theatres. In cinemas. In schools. And online.
--
Discover our work: https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/
Broadcast to cinemas worldwide: https://www.ntlive.com/
Streaming online: https://www.ntathome.com/
Subscribe on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/NationalTheatre
National Theatre Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nationaltheatre
National Theatre Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nationaltheatre
National Theatre TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@nationaltheatre
National Theatre Twitter: https://twitter.com/NationalTheatre
National Theatre Live Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ntlive
National Theatre Live Twitter: https://twitter.com/NTLive
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About The Playboy of the Western World at the National Theatre
J.M. Synge's The Playboy of the Western World is one of the great masterpieces of Irish theatre, first performed at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin in 1907 — where it famously caused riots. The National Theatre's production brings together an exceptional Irish cast including Siobhán McSweeney and Nicola Coughlan, and has been celebrated for its wit, its visual invention, and its fearless reimagining of the play's female characters.
This Meet Me at Stage Door film captures Siobhán McSweeney in the hour before curtain in a film that is as entertaining as anything on stage.
#SiobhanMcSweeney #MeetMeAtStageDoor #NationalTheatre #BackstageAccess #BehindTheScenes
Director Anthony Lau, designer Georgia Lowe & choreographer Aline David reveal how Man and Boy came to life at the National Theatre.
Stream now on National Theatre at Home on ntathome.com/man-and-boy
In his National Theatre debut, director Anthony Lau (The Crucible,) brings a sharp, contemporary interpretation to Terence Rattigan’s tale of paternity and corruption.
Featuring Ben Daniels (The Normal Heart) and Laurie Kynaston (Long Day’s Journey into Night) as father and son, in what Time Out describes as ‘the performance of the year’, this critically acclaimed production is available to stream online on National Theatre at Home.
A production from National Theatre.
Photography: Manuel Harlan
Set and Costume Designer: Georgia Lowe
00:00 The creative process behind Man and Boy
00:09 Creating the theatre spaces on Man and Boy
02:06 The rehearsal process in Man and Boy
04:01 Collaboration in theatre
The Creative Team
Anthony Lau directs in his National Theatre debut, bringing a sharp contemporary edge to Rattigan's razor-sharp play set against the glamour and impending collapse of 1930s New York. Joining Daniels and Kynaston are Phoebe Campbell as Carol Penn, Isabella Laughland as Countess Antonescu, Malcolm Sinclair as Mark Herries, Leo Wan as David Beeston, and Nick Fletcher as Sven Johnson. The creative team includes set and costume designer Georgia Lowe, lighting designer Elliot Griggs, composer Angus MacRae, and sound designer Giles Thomas.
--
We believe that great theatre sparks imagination and brings people together.
Every day we strive to make the world a better place through theatre; entertaining and inspiring audiences around the world, using our creativity, expertise and unique reach.
You’ll find us in theatres. In cinemas. In schools. And online.
--
Discover our work: https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/
Broadcast to cinemas worldwide: https://www.ntlive.com/
Streaming online: https://www.ntathome.com/
Subscribe on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/NationalTheatre
National Theatre Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nationaltheatre
National Theatre Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nationaltheatre
National Theatre TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@nationaltheatre
National Theatre Twitter: https://twitter.com/NationalTheatre
National Theatre Live Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ntlive
National Theatre Live Twitter: https://twitter.com/NTLive
About the author
Terrence Rattigan was a British dramatist and screenwriter. He was one of England's most popular mid-20th-century dramatists. He wrote The Winslow Boy (1946), The Browning Version (1948), The Deep Blue Sea (1952) and Separate Tables (1954), among many others.
In 1990, the British Library acquired Rattigan's papers consisting of 300 volumes of correspondence and papers relating to his prose and dramatic works.
There was a revival of The Deep Blue Sea in 1993, at the Almeida Theatre, London, directed by Karel Reisz and starring Penelope Wilton. A string of successful revivals followed, including The Winslow Boy at the Chichester Festival Theatre in 2001 (with David Rintoul, and subsequently on tour in 2002 with Edward Fox), Man and Boy at the Duchess Theatre, London, in 2005, with David Suchet as Gregor Antonescu, and In Praise of Love at Chichester, and Separate Tables at the Royal Exchange, Manchester, in 2006. His play on the last days of Lord Nelson, A Bequest to the Nation, was revived on Radio 3 for Trafalgar 200, starring Janet McTeer as Lady Hamilton, Kenneth Branagh as Nelson, and Amanda Root as Lady Nelson.
Thea Sharrock directed his rarely seen After the Dance in the summer of 2010 at London's Royal National Theatre. She directed a major new production of Rattigan's final and also rarely seen play Cause Célèbre at The Old Vic in March 2011 as part of The Terence Rattigan Centenary year celebrations. As well as this, Trevor Nunn marked the occasion with a West End revival of Flare Path at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket, between March and June 2011, starring Sienna Miller, James Purefoy and Sheridan Smith.
In 2011, the BBC presented The Rattigan Enigma by Benedict Cumberbatch, a documentary on Rattigan's life and career presented by actor Benedict Cumberbatch, who, like Rattigan, attended Harrow.
A new screen version of The Deep Blue Sea, directed by Terence Davies, was released in 2011, starring Rachel Weisz and Tom Hiddleston. In 2026, London's Royal National Theatre staged a revival of Man and Boy, directed by Anthony Lau and starring Ben Daniels and Laurie Kynaston.
#ManAndBoy #NationalTheatre #NTatHome #TerenceRattigan #BenDaniels
1930s New York. An empire crumbling. A father with nowhere left to run. Ben Daniels & Laurie Kynaston in Terence Rattigan's Man and Boy. Stream now on National Theatre at Home on ntathome.com/man-and-boy
In his National Theatre debut, director Anthony Lau (The Crucible,) brings a sharp, contemporary interpretation to Terence Rattigan’s tale of paternity and corruption.
Featuring Ben Daniels (The Normal Heart) and Laurie Kynaston (Long Day’s Journey into Night) as father and son, in what Time Out describes as ‘the performance of the year’, this critically acclaimed production is available to stream online on National Theatre at Home.
A production from National Theatre.
Photography: Manuel Harlan
Set and Costume Designer: Georgia Lowe
The Creative Team
Anthony Lau directs in his National Theatre debut, bringing a sharp contemporary edge to Rattigan's razor-sharp play set against the glamour and impending collapse of 1930s New York. Joining Daniels and Kynaston are Phoebe Campbell as Carol Penn, Isabella Laughland as Countess Antonescu, Malcolm Sinclair as Mark Herries, Leo Wan as David Beeston, and Nick Fletcher as Sven Johnson. The creative team includes set and costume designer Georgia Lowe, lighting designer Elliot Griggs, composer Angus MacRae, and sound designer Giles Thomas.
--
We believe that great theatre sparks imagination and brings people together.
Every day we strive to make the world a better place through theatre; entertaining and inspiring audiences around the world, using our creativity, expertise and unique reach.
You’ll find us in theatres. In cinemas. In schools. And online.
--
Discover our work: https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/
Broadcast to cinemas worldwide: https://www.ntlive.com/
Streaming online: https://www.ntathome.com/
Subscribe on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/NationalTheatre
National Theatre Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nationaltheatre
National Theatre Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nationaltheatre
National Theatre TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@nationaltheatre
National Theatre Twitter: https://twitter.com/NationalTheatre
National Theatre Live Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ntlive
National Theatre Live Twitter: https://twitter.com/NTLive
About the author
Terrence Rattigan was a British dramatist and screenwriter. He was one of England's most popular mid-20th-century dramatists. He wrote The Winslow Boy (1946), The Browning Version (1948), The Deep Blue Sea (1952) and Separate Tables (1954), among many others.
In 1990, the British Library acquired Rattigan's papers consisting of 300 volumes of correspondence and papers relating to his prose and dramatic works.
There was a revival of The Deep Blue Sea in 1993, at the Almeida Theatre, London, directed by Karel Reisz and starring Penelope Wilton. A string of successful revivals followed, including The Winslow Boy at the Chichester Festival Theatre in 2001 (with David Rintoul, and subsequently on tour in 2002 with Edward Fox), Man and Boy at the Duchess Theatre, London, in 2005, with David Suchet as Gregor Antonescu, and In Praise of Love at Chichester, and Separate Tables at the Royal Exchange, Manchester, in 2006. His play on the last days of Lord Nelson, A Bequest to the Nation, was revived on Radio 3 for Trafalgar 200, starring Janet McTeer as Lady Hamilton, Kenneth Branagh as Nelson, and Amanda Root as Lady Nelson.
Thea Sharrock directed his rarely seen After the Dance in the summer of 2010 at London's Royal National Theatre. She directed a major new production of Rattigan's final and also rarely seen play Cause Célèbre at The Old Vic in March 2011 as part of The Terence Rattigan Centenary year celebrations. As well as this, Trevor Nunn marked the occasion with a West End revival of Flare Path at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket, between March and June 2011, starring Sienna Miller, James Purefoy and Sheridan Smith.
In 2011, the BBC presented The Rattigan Enigma by Benedict Cumberbatch, a documentary on Rattigan's life and career presented by actor Benedict Cumberbatch, who, like Rattigan, attended Harrow.
A new screen version of The Deep Blue Sea, directed by Terence Davies, was released in 2011, starring Rachel Weisz and Tom Hiddleston. In 2026, London's Royal National Theatre staged a revival of Man and Boy, directed by Anthony Lau and starring Ben Daniels and Laurie Kynaston.
#ManAndBoy #NationalTheatre #NTatHome #TerenceRattigan #BenDaniels
Don’t miss your chance to watch this multi award-winning production featuring Andrew Scott, Indira Varma, and Sophie Thompson.
Head to the National Theatre at Home www.nationaltheatreathome.com to stream before Monday 1 June 5PM BST.
Captured live from The Old Vic.
Set and Costume Design by Rob Howell.
The multi award-winning production of Noël Coward's provocative comedy featuring Andrew Scott (Vanya, Fleabag).
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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.
Captured live from The Old Vic in London, Matthew Warchus directs Present Laughter in a giddy and surprisingly modern reflection on fame, desire and loneliness.
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At the National Theatre in London, we make world-class theatre that is entertaining, challenging and inspiring. And we make it for everyone: https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/
National Theatre Live broadcast the best of British theatre to cinemas in the UK and around the world: https://www.ntlive.com
National Theatre at Home streams unmissable theatre to you any time, anywhere: https://www.ntathome.com
The cast of new musical Pride perform 'You Stood By Me' - live, for members of the Welsh mining community and LGSM – whose remarkable story the musical is based on, ahead of its National Theatre premiere.
Watch as the cast of Pride: The New Musical perform 'You Stood By Me' — live, for the very people whose extraordinary story inspired it: members of the Welsh mining community and original members of Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners (LGSM), who stood together during the 1984 miners' strike and changed each other's lives forever.
Original LGSM members and Welsh mining community figures whose real lives are woven into the fabric of this show, Jonathan Blake, Siân James, and Dai Donovan — sat in that room and heard their story sung back to them.
About PRIDE a new musical at the National Theatre
Summer, 1984. With miners on strike across the country, 24-year-old activist Mark Ashton tries to rally a disparate group of gay men and lesbians into supporting the beleaguered miners. Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners (LGSM) quickly finds itself entwined with a small pit village in South Wales.
What follows is the remarkable true story of two threatened communities joining forces – and discovering they have more in common than they ever imagined.
Funny, fierce and full of heart, Pride unites the director and writer of the original film, Matthew Warchus and Stephen Beresford, with composers Christopher Nightingale, Josh Cohen and DJ Walde.
Together they share the inspiring story of these real-life events, set to an original score with songs inspired by protest anthems, pop, rock, disco and the Welsh choral tradition.
Find out more and book tickets on the National Theatre website: https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/productions/pride/
The cast includes Jhon Lumsden as Mark Ashton, Samuel Barnett as Jonathan, Courtney Stapleton as Steph, Caroline Sheen as Maureen, Kirsty Malpass as Hefina, Chris Jenkins as Gethin, and Sarah Pugh as Siân
#PrideTheMusical #NationalTheatre #LGSM #YouStoodByMe #MinersStrike1984
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We believe that great theatre sparks imagination and brings people together.
Every day we strive to make the world a better place through theatre; entertaining and inspiring audiences around the world, using our creativity, expertise and unique reach.
You’ll find us in theatres. In cinemas. In schools. And online.
--
Discover our work: https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/
Broadcast to cinemas worldwide: https://www.ntlive.com/
Streaming online: https://www.ntathome.com/
Subscribe on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/NationalTheatre
National Theatre Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nationaltheatre
National Theatre Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nationaltheatre
National Theatre TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@nationaltheatre
National Theatre Twitter: https://twitter.com/NationalTheatre
National Theatre Live Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ntlive
National Theatre Live Twitter: https://twitter.com/NTLive
The cast of new musical Pride perform 'You Stood By Me' - live, for members of the Welsh mining community and LGSM – whose remarkable story the musical is based on, ahead of its National Theatre premiere.
Watch as the cast of Pride: The New Musical perform 'You Stood By Me' — live, for the very people whose extraordinary story inspired it: members of the Welsh mining community and original members of Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners (LGSM), who stood together during the 1984 miners' strike and changed each other's lives forever.
Original LGSM members and Welsh mining community figures whose real lives are woven into the fabric of this show, Jonathan Blake, Siân James, and Dai Donovan — sat in that room and heard their story sung back to them.
About PRIDE a new musical at the National Theatre
Summer, 1984. With miners on strike across the country, 24-year-old activist Mark Ashton tries to rally a disparate group of gay men and lesbians into supporting the beleaguered miners. Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners (LGSM) quickly finds itself entwined with a small pit village in South Wales.
What follows is the remarkable true story of two threatened communities joining forces – and discovering they have more in common than they ever imagined.
Funny, fierce and full of heart, Pride unites the director and writer of the original film, Matthew Warchus and Stephen Beresford, with composers Christopher Nightingale, Josh Cohen and DJ Walde.
Together they share the inspiring story of these real-life events, set to an original score with songs inspired by protest anthems, pop, rock, disco and the Welsh choral tradition.
Find out more and book tickets on the National Theatre website: https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/productions/pride/
The cast includes Jhon Lumsden as Mark Ashton, Samuel Barnett as Jonathan, Courtney Stapleton as Steph, Caroline Sheen as Maureen, Kirsty Malpass as Hefina, Chris Jenkins as Gethin, and Sarah Pugh as Siân
#PrideTheMusical #NationalTheatre #LGSM #YouStoodByMe #MinersStrike1984
--
We believe that great theatre sparks imagination and brings people together.
Every day we strive to make the world a better place through theatre; entertaining and inspiring audiences around the world, using our creativity, expertise and unique reach.
You’ll find us in theatres. In cinemas. In schools. And online.
--
Discover our work: https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/
Broadcast to cinemas worldwide: https://www.ntlive.com/
Streaming online: https://www.ntathome.com/
Subscribe on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/NationalTheatre
National Theatre Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nationaltheatre
National Theatre Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nationaltheatre
National Theatre TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@nationaltheatre
National Theatre Twitter: https://twitter.com/NationalTheatre
National Theatre Live Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ntlive
National Theatre Live Twitter: https://twitter.com/NTLive
1930s New York. An empire crumbling. A father with nowhere left to run. Ben Daniels & Laurie Kynaston in Terence Rattigan's Man and Boy. Stream now on National Theatre at Home on ntathome.com/man-and-boy
In his National Theatre debut, director Anthony Lau (The Crucible,) brings a sharp, contemporary interpretation to Terence Rattigan’s tale of paternity and corruption.
Featuring Ben Daniels (The Normal Heart) and Laurie Kynaston (Long Day’s Journey into Night) as father and son, in what Time Out describes as ‘the performance of the year’, this critically acclaimed production is available to stream online on National Theatre at Home.
A production from National Theatre.
Photography: Manuel Harlan
Set and Costume Designer: Georgia Lowe
The Creative Team
Anthony Lau directs in his National Theatre debut, bringing a sharp contemporary edge to Rattigan's razor-sharp play set against the glamour and impending collapse of 1930s New York. Joining Daniels and Kynaston are Phoebe Campbell as Carol Penn, Isabella Laughland as Countess Antonescu, Malcolm Sinclair as Mark Herries, Leo Wan as David Beeston, and Nick Fletcher as Sven Johnson. The creative team includes set and costume designer Georgia Lowe, lighting designer Elliot Griggs, composer Angus MacRae, and sound designer Giles Thomas.
--
We believe that great theatre sparks imagination and brings people together.
Every day we strive to make the world a better place through theatre; entertaining and inspiring audiences around the world, using our creativity, expertise and unique reach.
You’ll find us in theatres. In cinemas. In schools. And online.
--
Discover our work: https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/
Broadcast to cinemas worldwide: https://www.ntlive.com/
Streaming online: https://www.ntathome.com/
Subscribe on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/NationalTheatre
National Theatre Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nationaltheatre
National Theatre Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nationaltheatre
National Theatre TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@nationaltheatre
National Theatre Twitter: https://twitter.com/NationalTheatre
National Theatre Live Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ntlive
National Theatre Live Twitter: https://twitter.com/NTLive
About the author
Terrence Rattigan was a British dramatist and screenwriter. He was one of England's most popular mid-20th-century dramatists. He wrote The Winslow Boy (1946), The Browning Version (1948), The Deep Blue Sea (1952) and Separate Tables (1954), among many others.
In 1990, the British Library acquired Rattigan's papers consisting of 300 volumes of correspondence and papers relating to his prose and dramatic works.
There was a revival of The Deep Blue Sea in 1993, at the Almeida Theatre, London, directed by Karel Reisz and starring Penelope Wilton. A string of successful revivals followed, including The Winslow Boy at the Chichester Festival Theatre in 2001 (with David Rintoul, and subsequently on tour in 2002 with Edward Fox), Man and Boy at the Duchess Theatre, London, in 2005, with David Suchet as Gregor Antonescu, and In Praise of Love at Chichester, and Separate Tables at the Royal Exchange, Manchester, in 2006. His play on the last days of Lord Nelson, A Bequest to the Nation, was revived on Radio 3 for Trafalgar 200, starring Janet McTeer as Lady Hamilton, Kenneth Branagh as Nelson, and Amanda Root as Lady Nelson.
Thea Sharrock directed his rarely seen After the Dance in the summer of 2010 at London's Royal National Theatre. She directed a major new production of Rattigan's final and also rarely seen play Cause Célèbre at The Old Vic in March 2011 as part of The Terence Rattigan Centenary year celebrations. As well as this, Trevor Nunn marked the occasion with a West End revival of Flare Path at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket, between March and June 2011, starring Sienna Miller, James Purefoy and Sheridan Smith.
In 2011, the BBC presented The Rattigan Enigma by Benedict Cumberbatch, a documentary on Rattigan's life and career presented by actor Benedict Cumberbatch, who, like Rattigan, attended Harrow.
A new screen version of The Deep Blue Sea, directed by Terence Davies, was released in 2011, starring Rachel Weisz and Tom Hiddleston. In 2026, London's Royal National Theatre staged a revival of Man and Boy, directed by Anthony Lau and starring Ben Daniels and Laurie Kynaston.
#ManAndBoy #NationalTheatre #NTatHome #TerenceRattigan #BenDaniels
James Graham sat down with Clare Balding for a deep dive into his Olivier Award-winning play, Dear England, during its major national tour until March 2026.
'I was sitting in a pub, which is where all the best ideas start.'
This five-star ‘new stage epic’ (Telegraph) tells the uplifting, at times heartbreaking, and ultimately inspiring story of Gareth Southgate’s revolutionary tenure as England manager.
Chapters:
00:00 Dear England Tour Trailer
00:54 James Graham & Clare Balding Part 1: Gareth Southgate inspiring story
05:14 James Graham & Clare Balding Part 2 Pippa Grange, a wonderful psychologist
08:43 James Graham & Clare Balding Part 3: Gareth Southgate is the protagonist of the story
11:33 James Graham & Clare Balding Part 4: Playwriting and inspiration
Learn more about the production: https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/productions/dear-england/
It’s time to change the game.
The country that gave the world football has since delivered a painful pattern of loss. Why can’t England’s men win at their own game?
With the worst track record for penalties in the world, Gareth Southgate knows he needs to open his mind and face up to the years of hurt to take team and country back to the promised land.
#garethsouthgate #theatre #playwright #jamesgraham #nationaltheatre
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We believe that great theatre sparks imagination and brings people together.
Every day we strive to make the world a better place through theatre; entertaining and inspiring audiences around the world, using our creativity, expertise and unique reach.
You’ll find us in theatres. In cinemas. In schools. And online.
--
Discover our work: https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/
Broadcast to cinemas worldwide: https://www.ntlive.com/
Streaming online: https://www.ntathome.com/
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About James Graham
British playwright and screenwriter. His work has been staged throughout the UK and internationally, at theatres including the Bush, Soho Theatre, Clwyd Theatr Cymru, Royal Court Theatre, Liverpool and the National Theatre.
Graham's first professional play, Albert's Boy, was produced by the Finborough Theatre in west London, where Graham became playwright-in-residence. His first major play This House was commissioned by the Royal National Theatre, transferred to the larger Olivier Theatre, and was nominated for the Olivier Award for Best New Play. This House was revived in 2016 and ran for two years, first in the West End and then on a national tour.
In 2025, his play Make It Happen was performed at the Dundee Rep Theatre and the Edinburgh International Festival, starring Sandy Grierson as Fred Goodwin, former CEO of the Royal Bank of Scotland, and Brian Cox as Adam Smith. Also in 2025, his play Punch was produced by the Manhattan Theatre Club and performed at Broadway’s Samuel J. Friedman Theatre.
About Clare Balding
English broadcast journalist and author. She currently presents programmes for BBC Sport and Channel 4, and previously for BT Sport. She also formerly presented Good Morning Sunday on BBC Radio 2. Balding was appointed as the 30th president of the Rugby Football League, serving a two-year term until December 2022.
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We believe that great theatre sparks imagination and brings people together.
Every day we strive to make the world a better place through theatre; entertaining and inspiring audiences around the world, using our creativity, expertise and unique reach.
You’ll find us in theatres. In cinemas. In schools. And online.
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Discover our work: https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/
Broadcast to cinemas worldwide: https://www.ntlive.com/
Streaming online: https://www.ntathome.com/
Subscribe on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/NationalTheatre
National Theatre Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nationaltheatre
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Learn more about this joy-filled new musical from the cast and creatives themselves.
Pride plays in our Dorfman Theatre from 11 June.
Head to the National Theatre website to find out more and book tickets.
Produced by P&P Productions with the National Theatre, in association with Pathé.
About PRIDE a new musical at the National Theatre
Summer, 1984. With miners on strike across the country, 24-year-old activist Mark Ashton tries to rally a disparate group of gay men and lesbians into supporting the beleaguered miners. Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners (LGSM) quickly finds itself entwined with a small pit village in South Wales.
What follows is the remarkable true story of two threatened communities joining forces – and discovering they have more in common than they ever imagined.
Funny, fierce and full of heart, Pride unites the director and writer of the original film, Matthew Warchus and Stephen Beresford, with composers Christopher Nightingale, Josh Cohen and DJ Walde.
Together they share the inspiring story of these real-life events, set to an original score with songs inspired by protest anthems, pop, rock, disco and the Welsh choral tradition.
Find out more and book tickets on the National Theatre website: https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/productions/pride/
The cast includes Jhon Lumsden as Mark Ashton, Samuel Barnett as Jonathan, Courtney Stapleton as Steph, Caroline Sheen as Maureen, Kirsty Malpass as Hefina, Chris Jenkins as Gethin, and Sarah Pugh as Siân
#PrideTheMusical #NationalTheatre #LGSM #YouStoodByMe #MinersStrike1984
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We believe that great theatre sparks imagination and brings people together.
Every day we strive to make the world a better place through theatre; entertaining and inspiring audiences around the world, using our creativity, expertise and unique reach.
You’ll find us in theatres. In cinemas. In schools. And online.
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Discover our work: https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/
Broadcast to cinemas worldwide: https://www.ntlive.com/
Streaming online: https://www.ntathome.com/
Subscribe on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/NationalTheatre
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Les Liaisons Dangereuses, with Lesley Manville, Aidan Turner, and Monica Barbaro, plays in our Lyttelton Theatre until 6 June 2026 then hits cinemas worldwide from 25 June 2026.
Head to the National Theatre Live website to find a screening near you.
Set Design by Rosanna Vize.
Costume Design by Natalie Roar.
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We believe that great theatre sparks imagination and brings people together.
Every day we strive to make the world a better place through theatre; entertaining and inspiring audiences around the world, using our creativity, expertise and unique reach.
You’ll find us in theatres. In cinemas. In schools. And online.
--
Discover our work: https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/
Broadcast to cinemas worldwide: https://www.ntlive.com/
Streaming online: https://www.ntathome.com/
Subscribe on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/NationalTheatre
National Theatre Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nationaltheatre
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National Theatre TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@nationaltheatre
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National Theatre Live Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ntlive
National Theatre Live Twitter: https://twitter.com/NTLive
The pen is mightier than the sword. And in the glittering, treacherous salons of 18th-century Paris, it has never been more dangerous.Among the glittering salons of the super-rich, patriarchy equals power, reputation is everything — and for women, one misstep can mean ruin. Marquise de Merteuil, master in the art of survival, wields her influence with intelligence and control. Alongside the magnetic Vicomte de Valmont, they turn seduction into strategy and weaponise desire. But when their alliance collapses into rivalry, the battle between them threatens to destroy everyone in their path.
Marianne Elliott (Angels in America) directs Lesley Manville (Phantom Thread) and Aidan Turner (Rivals) in a striking new staging of Christopher Hampton's celebrated adaptation of Choderlos de Laclos' classic novel — a thrilling game of love, lies and social warfare. Monica Barbaro (Top Gun: Maverick) completes the central trio as the virtuous and vulnerable Madame de Tourvel — the woman both Merteuil and Valmont, in different ways, will destroy.
The Cast
Lesley Manville plays the Marquise de Merteuil, Aidan Turner plays the Vicomte de Valmont, and Monica Barbaro plays Madame de Tourvel. They are joined by Hannah van der Westhuysen as the young Cécile de Volanges, Darragh Hand as the Chevalier Danceny, Gabrielle Drake as Madame de Rosemonde, and Cat Simmons as Madame de Volanges.
The Creative Team
Set design is by Rosanna Vize, costume design by Natalie Roar, choreography by Tom Jackson Greaves, lighting by James Farncombe, composition by Jasmin Kent Rodgman, and sound design by Ian Dickinson for Autograph. The production is a feast of visual invention — at its centre, a colossal mirrorball chandelier of 144 individually controlled wax candles that casts extraordinary cage-like shadows across the stage as it slowly, unstoppably revolves.
#LesLiaisonsDangereuses #LesleyManville #AidanTurner #NationalTheatre #NTLive
Hugh Jackman, Audra McDonald, Sara Bareilles & more. Six show-stopping musical theatre vocals — all streaming now on National Theatre at Home. This is what world-class sounds like.
00:00 Musicals now streaming on National Theatre at Home
00:19 — Hugh Jackman | 'Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin'' | Oklahoma!
The show that invented the modern musical, and one of its greatest ever songs — performed by one of the most magnetic stage presences of his generation. Hugh Jackman's Oklahoma! was the most talked-about production of its era, and this opening number — so deceptively simple, so quietly perfect — is the reason. Rodgers & Hammerstein at their most luminous.
02:53 — Sara Bareilles | 'What's Inside?' | Waitress: The Musical
Singer-songwriter Sara Bareilles performing her own music live on stage — a rare and extraordinary thing. Raw, intimate, and completely unguarded, this is musical theatre writing at its most personal, performed by the woman who wrote it.
04:02 — Audra McDonald | 'I Could Have Danced All Night' | My Fair Lady — I Am What I Am (Director's Cut)
Audra McDonald. One of the most decorated performers in Broadway history — six Tony Awards, a Grammy, and an Emmy — singing one of the most beloved songs in the entire musical theatre canon, in a director's Cut version of her concert.
05:34 — Caissie Levy, Jamie Parker & Jack Wolfe | 'I Am the One' | Next to Normal
One of the great contemporary musical theatre scores, and one of its most emotionally complex numbers — performed by a trio at the absolute peak of their powers. Next to Normal is musical theatre that refuses to look away from the darkest corners of family life, and 'I Am the One' is its most shattering confrontation.
07:50 — Michael Elcock & Ensemble | 'Prince Bert' | Hex: A New Musical
The National Theatre's own bold new musical commission — Hex — a reimagining of the Sleeping Beauty legend with an extraordinary original score — and this ensemble number is its beating, joyful heart.
10:29 — Malinda Parris | 'Work of Heart' | The Little Big Things
Based on the remarkable true story of Henry Fraser, The Little Big Things is one of the most moving new musicals in recent memory. Malinda Parris's performance of 'Work of Heart' is a masterclass in restraint and power.
What does world-class musical theatre sound like? It sounds like this. This compilation brings together six of the most extraordinary vocal performances available to stream right now on National Theatre at Home — spanning Oklahoma!, Waitress, My Fair Lady, Next to Normal, Hex, and The Little Big Things — performed by some of the biggest names in musical theatre on both sides of the Atlantic. A love letter to the human voice, and to the art form that uses it better than any other.
Where to Watch These Shows
Every production featured in this compilation is available to stream in full on National Theatre at Home — the NT's streaming platform bringing world-class theatre directly to your screen. New titles are added monthly.
Stream these hit musicals now at ntathome.com
#NationalTheatreAtHome #MusicalTheatre #HughJackman #AudraMcDonald #NationalTheatre
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We believe that great theatre sparks imagination and brings people together.
Every day we strive to make the world a better place through theatre; entertaining and inspiring audiences around the world, using our creativity, expertise and unique reach.
You’ll find us in theatres. In cinemas. In schools. And online.
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Discover our work: https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/
Broadcast to cinemas worldwide: https://www.ntlive.com/
Streaming online: https://www.ntathome.com/
Subscribe on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/NationalTheatre
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Les Liaisons Dangereuses comes to cinemas from 25 June with National Theatre Live. Get tickets here: https://www.ntlive.com/plays/les-liaisons-dangereuses/tickets/
BAFTA Award-winner Lesley Manville (Phantom Thread) joins Aidan Turner (Rivals) in a striking new staging of Christopher Hampton’s celebrated adaptation of the classic novel, where among the glittering salons of the super-rich, one misstep can mean ruin.
Marquise de Merteuil is a master in the art of survival. Alongside the magnetic Vicomte de Valmont, they turn seduction into strategy and weaponise desire. But when their alliance collapses into rivalry, the battle between them threatens to destroy everyone in their path.
Filmed live on stage at the National Theatre, Marianne Elliott (Angels in America) directs this thrilling game of love, lies, and social warfare.
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We believe that great theatre sparks imagination and brings people together.
Every day we strive to make the world a better place through theatre; entertaining and inspiring audiences around the world, using our creativity, expertise and unique reach.
You’ll find us in theatres. In cinemas. In schools. And online.
--
Discover our work: https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/
Broadcast to cinemas worldwide: https://www.ntlive.com/
Streaming online: https://www.ntathome.com/
Subscribe on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/NationalTheatre
National Theatre Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nationaltheatre
National Theatre Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nationaltheatre
National Theatre TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@nationaltheatre
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National Theatre Live Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ntlive
National Theatre Live Twitter: https://twitter.com/NTLive
Now in its third year in London's West End, Hadestown bookings are available through to 27 June 2027.
Head to the National Theatre website for more info and tickets. → nationaltheatre.org.uk/productions/hadestown/
144 candles, 11 teams, 1 Mirrorball — and it has to spin. Watch the National Theatre reveal how they built the breathtaking mirrorball at the heart of Les Liaisons Dangereuses.
A huge feat of engineering, watch as our creative and technical teams explain how they brought Les Liaisons Dangereuses' looming chandelier to life.
Five metres wide. Five metres tall. 1.4 tonnes of steel, mirror, and real wax candles. And it has to spin. In this extraordinary behind-the-scenes film, the creative and technical teams behind the National Theatre's Les Liaisons Dangereuses reveal how they brought the production's most breathtaking element to life — a monolithic mirrorball chandelier that is simultaneously the most beautiful and most terrifying thing in the room.
It is, in every sense, a feat of engineering. And it is also, in the hands of set designer Rosanna Vize, something far more than a technical achievement — it is the soul of the show.
The mirrorball is the central design feature of Les Liaisons Dangereuses at the National Theatre — and this film takes you inside every stage of its creation, from concept to the moment it finally flew up into the Lyttelton and spun for the first time.
The creative team explain the thinking: a production set in the world of 18th-century Paris needed an object that held two realities at once — the opulence and grandeur of Versailles, where mirrors and candles were the ultimate status symbol, and the aesthetic of a disco hall, a club, a space of dangerous pleasure. The mirrorball became that object: tantalising and exciting, but also oppressive. Ostensibly beautiful, but cold and hard beneath the surface — not unlike, the team note, the character played by Lesley Manville herself.
The technical achievement is staggering. The sphere has nine rings, each carrying 16 individually controlled candles — 144 in total — made of real wax with LED flame sources precisely matched to the colour temperature of a real flame, designed to glow from within exactly as a church candle does when its wick burns low. Eleven different technical departments — automation, rigging, lighting, electrics, and more — had to coordinate with perfect precision to make it work.
And making it spin, it turns out, was the hardest part. When the team first attempted it, the 1.4-tonne steel ball had enough momentum to start rotating — and then it would simply stop. The automation team worked back through the engineering to find the exact acceleration speeds that would allow it to move smoothly and continuously, without rocking. The moment it finally flew up into the Lyttelton and spun without interruption was, in the words of the technical team, pretty epic.
The mirrorball also produced one of the production's most powerful — and entirely accidental — design discoveries. When the lighting team shone a single light through the ball while working in the model box, it cast extraordinary cage-like shadows across the floor of the stage, twisting and turning as the ball rotated. What could have been an impossible lighting problem became, instead, one of the defining visual moments of the show: a shadow that speaks to the mechanical, clockwork brutality of the society the characters inhabit — beautiful on the surface, ruthless underneath.
About the Design
Set Design by Rosanna Vize. Costume Design by Natalie Roar. The production plays in the Lyttelton Theatre, with NT Live cinema screenings. A production from the National Theatre.
Les Liaisons Dangereuses is one of the great stories of seduction, power, and moral consequence — brought to the NT stage with Lesley Manville, Aidan Turner, and Monica Barbaro, in a production that connects an unbroken line from 18th-century Paris to the present day without leaning entirely into either world.
Find out more: https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/productions/les-liaisons-dangereuses/
Set Design by Rosanna Vize
Costume Design by Natalie Roar
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We believe that great theatre sparks imagination and brings people together.
Every day we strive to make the world a better place through theatre; entertaining and inspiring audiences around the world, using our creativity, expertise and unique reach.
You’ll find us in theatres. In cinemas. In schools. And online.
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Discover our work: https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/
Broadcast to cinemas worldwide: https://www.ntlive.com/
Streaming online: https://www.ntathome.com/
Subscribe on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/NationalTheatre
National Theatre Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nationaltheatre
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#LesLiaisonsDangereuses #NationalTheatre #SetDesign #TheatreEngineering #NTLive
Don’t miss your chance to watch this multi award-winning production featuring Andrew Scott, Indira Varma, and Sophie Thompson.
Head to the National Theatre at Home website to stream before Monday 1 June 5PM BST.
Captured live from The Old Vic.
Set and Costume Design by Rob Howell.
1930s New York. An empire crumbling. A father with nowhere left to run. Ben Daniels & Laurie Kynaston in Terence Rattigan's Man and Boy. Stream now on National Theatre at Home on ntathome.com/man-and-boy
In his National Theatre debut, director Anthony Lau (The Crucible,) brings a sharp, contemporary interpretation to Terence Rattigan’s tale of paternity and corruption.
Featuring Ben Daniels (The Normal Heart) and Laurie Kynaston (Long Day’s Journey into Night) as father and son, in what Time Out describes as ‘the performance of the year’, this critically acclaimed production is available to stream online on National Theatre at Home.
A production from National Theatre.
Photography: Manuel Harlan
Set and Costume Designer: Georgia Lowe
The Creative Team
Anthony Lau directs in his National Theatre debut, bringing a sharp contemporary edge to Rattigan's razor-sharp play set against the glamour and impending collapse of 1930s New York. Joining Daniels and Kynaston are Phoebe Campbell as Carol Penn, Isabella Laughland as Countess Antonescu, Malcolm Sinclair as Mark Herries, Leo Wan as David Beeston, and Nick Fletcher as Sven Johnson. The creative team includes set and costume designer Georgia Lowe, lighting designer Elliot Griggs, composer Angus MacRae, and sound designer Giles Thomas.
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We believe that great theatre sparks imagination and brings people together.
Every day we strive to make the world a better place through theatre; entertaining and inspiring audiences around the world, using our creativity, expertise and unique reach.
You’ll find us in theatres. In cinemas. In schools. And online.
--
Discover our work: https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/
Broadcast to cinemas worldwide: https://www.ntlive.com/
Streaming online: https://www.ntathome.com/
Subscribe on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/NationalTheatre
National Theatre Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nationaltheatre
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About the author
Terrence Rattigan was a British dramatist and screenwriter. He was one of England's most popular mid-20th-century dramatists. He wrote The Winslow Boy (1946), The Browning Version (1948), The Deep Blue Sea (1952) and Separate Tables (1954), among many others.
In 1990, the British Library acquired Rattigan's papers consisting of 300 volumes of correspondence and papers relating to his prose and dramatic works.
There was a revival of The Deep Blue Sea in 1993, at the Almeida Theatre, London, directed by Karel Reisz and starring Penelope Wilton. A string of successful revivals followed, including The Winslow Boy at the Chichester Festival Theatre in 2001 (with David Rintoul, and subsequently on tour in 2002 with Edward Fox), Man and Boy at the Duchess Theatre, London, in 2005, with David Suchet as Gregor Antonescu, and In Praise of Love at Chichester, and Separate Tables at the Royal Exchange, Manchester, in 2006. His play on the last days of Lord Nelson, A Bequest to the Nation, was revived on Radio 3 for Trafalgar 200, starring Janet McTeer as Lady Hamilton, Kenneth Branagh as Nelson, and Amanda Root as Lady Nelson.
Thea Sharrock directed his rarely seen After the Dance in the summer of 2010 at London's Royal National Theatre. She directed a major new production of Rattigan's final and also rarely seen play Cause Célèbre at The Old Vic in March 2011 as part of The Terence Rattigan Centenary year celebrations. As well as this, Trevor Nunn marked the occasion with a West End revival of Flare Path at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket, between March and June 2011, starring Sienna Miller, James Purefoy and Sheridan Smith.
In 2011, the BBC presented The Rattigan Enigma by Benedict Cumberbatch, a documentary on Rattigan's life and career presented by actor Benedict Cumberbatch, who, like Rattigan, attended Harrow.
A new screen version of The Deep Blue Sea, directed by Terence Davies, was released in 2011, starring Rachel Weisz and Tom Hiddleston. In 2026, London's Royal National Theatre staged a revival of Man and Boy, directed by Anthony Lau and starring Ben Daniels and Laurie Kynaston.
#ManAndBoy #NationalTheatre #NTatHome #TerenceRattigan #BenDaniels
Nicola Coughlan, Siobhan McSweeney & Éanna Hardwicke get competitive in this Pub Quiz about The Playboy of the Western staged at the National Theatre and Ireland, completely unscripted, singing Ireland's An Poc ar Buile.
In cinemas from 28 May with National Theatre Live.
Find your local venue: https://www.ntlive.com/plays/the-playboy-of-the-western-world/
Brian Boru's harp, the Book of Kells, the Aran Islands, and an impromptu rendition of An Poc ar Buile at two in the morning — this is what happens when you lock the cast of The Playboy of the Western World in a room together and hand someone a buzzer.
In this irresistible video, the cast of the National Theatre's production of J.M. Synge's The Playboy of the Western World go head-to-head in an Irish culture pub quiz — and the results are as chaotic, hilarious, and warmly human as the play itself. The cast members debate the relative woodenness of a concertina versus uilleann pipes, argue over whether County Mayo counts as a correct answer, and somehow end the first half level on points.
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We believe that great theatre sparks imagination and brings people together.
Every day we strive to make the world a better place through theatre; entertaining and inspiring audiences around the world, using our creativity, expertise and unique reach.
You’ll find us in theatres. In cinemas. In schools. And online.
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Discover our work: https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/
Broadcast to cinemas worldwide: https://www.ntlive.com/
Streaming online: https://www.ntathome.com/
Subscribe on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/NationalTheatre
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About the Production
The Playboy of the Western World by J.M. Synge is one of the great masterpieces of Irish theatre — first performed at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin in January 1907, where it famously caused riots in the audience. Set in County Mayo and soaked in the language, landscape, and folklore of the west of Ireland, it tells the story of Christy Mahon, who arrives at a remote village pub claiming to have killed his father — and promptly becomes a local hero. The National Theatre's production from 2025 brings together an exceptional Irish cast, and this clip gives a glimpse of the company's energy, wit, and warmth both on and off the stage.
Nicola Coughlan (Bridgerton) joins Éanna Hardwicke (The Sixth Commandment) and Siobhán McSweeney (Derry Girls) in John Millington Synge’s riveting play of youth and self-discovery.
Pegeen Flaherty’s life is turned upside down when a young man walks into her pub claiming that he’s killed his father. Instead of being shunned, the killer becomes a local hero and begins to win hearts, that is until a second man unexpectedly arrives on the scene…
Filmed live on stage at the National Theatre, Caitríona McLaughlin directs this darkly funny tale full to the brim with secrets.
About the Song
"An Poc ar Buile" is a lively traditional Irish-language song whose title translates roughly as "The Mad Billy Goat." The lyrics were written by Dónall Ó Mulláin around the 1940s, and the song tells the humorous story of a goat running wild — leaping walls, charging through bog and rock, and outwitting anyone trying to catch it. It became one of the first popular hits recorded in the Irish language, helping bring Gaeilge into mainstream music, with a version by Seán Ó Sé gaining wide popularity in the 1960s. Beyond its entertainment value, the song is considered a great tool for Irish language learners, as its repetitive chorus, vivid vocabulary, and cultural richness make it a memorable and enjoyable way to pick up grammar, pronunciation, and a feel for Irish tradition.
In this clip, writer Stephen Beresford chats with Welsh Mining Community Members Jonathan Blake and Siân James, as well as original LGSM Member, Dai Donvan, all whose remarkable story inspired the hit-film turned new musical.
Pride plays in the Dorfman Theatre from 11 June.
Head to the National Theatre website to find out more and book tickets.
Produced by P&P Productions with the National Theatre, in association with Pathé.
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We believe that great theatre sparks imagination and brings people together.
Every day we strive to make the world a better place through theatre; entertaining and inspiring audiences around the world, using our creativity, expertise and unique reach.
You’ll find us in theatres. In cinemas. In schools. And online.
--
Discover our work: https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/
Broadcast to cinemas worldwide: https://www.ntlive.com/
Streaming online: https://www.ntathome.com/
Subscribe on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/NationalTheatre
National Theatre Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nationaltheatre
National Theatre Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nationaltheatre
National Theatre TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@nationaltheatre
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National Theatre Live Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ntlive
National Theatre Live Twitter: https://twitter.com/NTLive
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Before there was a film, there was a photograph. Before there was a musical, there was a movement. In this remarkable clip, writer Stephen Beresford — the man who first brought the extraordinary true story of Pride to the screen, and now to the National Theatre stage — sits down with three of the people whose real lives inspired it all: Welsh mining community members Jonathan Blake and Siân James, and original LGSM member Dai Donovan. The result is a conversation of rare warmth, honesty, and historical significance — the story behind the story, told by the people who lived it.
The Real Story of Pride
Pride tells the true story of Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners (LGSM), who supported a Welsh mining village during the 1984 miners' strike — one of the most turbulent and defining moments in modern British political history. Based on the uplifting true story of solidarity between LGBTQ+ activists and striking Welsh miners, Pride follows two seemingly disparate communities united during one of Britain's most turbulent political eras — exploring themes of identity, resilience, and the power of unlikely alliances.
Beresford first came across this unlikely but incredibly touching story when he was at RADA, and twenty years later eventually managed to get it commissioned as a film. Now, more than a decade on from the film's release, he has returned to the material — this time for the stage — to let it, in his own words, finally sing.
The People in This Clip
Jonathan Blake is one of the founding members of LGSM and one of the most remarkable figures in this story. Jonathan Blake was one of the first people to be diagnosed with AIDS in the UK, who miraculously survived — a real-life proud founding member of LGSM. His courage, his wit, and his extraordinary capacity for solidarity between communities are at the heart of what makes Pride such an enduring story.
Siân James is one of the great Welsh community figures of the era. Siân James began as a young wife and mother and was transformed by the strike — subsequently attending Swansea University and serving as a Labour MP from 2005 to 2015. Hers is a story of political awakening that runs like a thread through everything Pride is about.
Dai Donovan is an original LGSM member whose voice and presence in this clip connects the musical directly to the grassroots movement that inspired it — a living reminder that what is now a celebrated story was, at the time, an act of genuine courage.
#PrideTheMusical #NationalTheatre #LGSM #StephenBeresford #MinersStrike1984
Pride writer Stephen Beresford chats with Welsh Mining Community Members Dai Donovan and Siân James, as well as original LGSM Member, Jonathan Blake, all whose remarkable story inspired the hit-film turned new musical.
About PRIDE a new musical at the National Theatre
Summer, 1984. With miners on strike across the country, 24-year-old activist Mark Ashton tries to rally a disparate group of gay men and lesbians into supporting the beleaguered miners. Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners (LGSM) quickly finds itself entwined with a small pit village in South Wales.
What follows is the remarkable true story of two threatened communities joining forces – and discovering they have more in common than they ever imagined.
Funny, fierce and full of heart, Pride unites the director and writer of the original film, Matthew Warchus and Stephen Beresford, with composers Christopher Nightingale, Josh Cohen and DJ Walde.
Together they share the inspiring story of these real-life events, set to an original score with songs inspired by protest anthems, pop, rock, disco and the Welsh choral tradition.
Find out more and book tickets on the National Theatre website: https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/productions/pride/
The cast includes Jhon Lumsden as Mark Ashton, Samuel Barnett as Jonathan, Courtney Stapleton as Steph, Caroline Sheen as Maureen, Kirsty Malpass as Hefina, Chris Jenkins as Gethin, and Sarah Pugh as Siân
#PrideTheMusical #NationalTheatre #LGSM #YouStoodByMe #MinersStrike1984
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We believe that great theatre sparks imagination and brings people together.
Every day we strive to make the world a better place through theatre; entertaining and inspiring audiences around the world, using our creativity, expertise and unique reach.
You’ll find us in theatres. In cinemas. In schools. And online.
--
Discover our work: https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/
Broadcast to cinemas worldwide: https://www.ntlive.com/
Streaming online: https://www.ntathome.com/
Subscribe on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/NationalTheatre
National Theatre Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nationaltheatre
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National Theatre Live Twitter: https://twitter.com/NTLive
Nicola Coughlan, Siobhan McSweeney & Éanna Hardwicke get competitive in this Pub Quiz about The Playboy of the Western staged at the National Theatre and Ireland, completely unscripted.
In cinemas from 28 May with National Theatre Live.
Find your local venue: https://www.ntlive.com/plays/the-playboy-of-the-western-world/
Brian Boru's harp, the Book of Kells, the Aran Islands, and an impromptu rendition of An Poc ar Buile at two in the morning — this is what happens when you lock the cast of The Playboy of the Western World in a room together and hand someone a buzzer.
In this irresistible video, the cast of the National Theatre's production of J.M. Synge's The Playboy of the Western World go head-to-head in an Irish culture pub quiz — and the results are as chaotic, hilarious, and warmly human as the play itself. The cast members debate the relative woodenness of a concertina versus uilleann pipes, argue over whether County Mayo counts as a correct answer, and somehow end the first half level on points.
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We believe that great theatre sparks imagination and brings people together.
Every day we strive to make the world a better place through theatre; entertaining and inspiring audiences around the world, using our creativity, expertise and unique reach.
You’ll find us in theatres. In cinemas. In schools. And online.
--
Discover our work: https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/
Broadcast to cinemas worldwide: https://www.ntlive.com/
Streaming online: https://www.ntathome.com/
Subscribe on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/NationalTheatre
National Theatre Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nationaltheatre
National Theatre Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nationaltheatre
National Theatre TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@nationaltheatre
National Theatre Twitter: https://twitter.com/NationalTheatre
National Theatre Live Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ntlive
National Theatre Live Twitter: https://twitter.com/NTLive
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About the Production
The Playboy of the Western World by J.M. Synge is one of the great masterpieces of Irish theatre — first performed at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin in January 1907, where it famously caused riots in the audience. Set in County Mayo and soaked in the language, landscape, and folklore of the west of Ireland, it tells the story of Christy Mahon, who arrives at a remote village pub claiming to have killed his father — and promptly becomes a local hero. The National Theatre's production from 2025 brings together an exceptional Irish cast, and this clip gives a glimpse of the company's energy, wit, and warmth both on and off the stage.
Nicola Coughlan (Bridgerton) joins Éanna Hardwicke (The Sixth Commandment) and Siobhán McSweeney (Derry Girls) in John Millington Synge’s riveting play of youth and self-discovery.
Pegeen Flaherty’s life is turned upside down when a young man walks into her pub claiming that he’s killed his father. Instead of being shunned, the killer becomes a local hero and begins to win hearts, that is until a second man unexpectedly arrives on the scene…
Filmed live on stage at the National Theatre, Caitríona McLaughlin directs this darkly funny tale full to the brim with secrets.
Two acting legends, one big idea: theatre brings us together. Ian McKellen & Judi Dench on why live theatre is irreplaceable — and why nothing on screen comes close. Hosted by Jim Carter.
Reflecting on what theatre does that nothing else can: take a room full of strangers from different backgrounds, ages, and beliefs, and by the end of the evening, turn them into one.
Warm, wise, funny, and quietly profound, this is a conversation about why live theatre matters more than ever — from two people who have devoted their lives to it.
Now streaming on National Theatre at Home https://www.ntathome.com/videos/judi-dench-and-ian-mckellen-in-conversation-with-jim-carter
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We believe that great theatre sparks imagination and brings people together.
Every day we strive to make the world a better place through theatre; entertaining and inspiring audiences around the world, using our creativity, expertise and unique reach.
You’ll find us in theatres. In cinemas. In schools. And online.
--
Discover our work: https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/
Broadcast to cinemas worldwide: https://www.ntlive.com/
Streaming online: https://www.ntathome.com/
Subscribe on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/NationalTheatre
National Theatre Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nationaltheatre
National Theatre Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nationaltheatre
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National Theatre Twitter: https://twitter.com/NationalTheatre
National Theatre Live Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ntlive
National Theatre Live Twitter: https://twitter.com/NTLive
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About the Speakers
Sir Ian McKellen is one of the most celebrated stage and screen actors of his generation, with a career spanning six decades and encompassing landmark Shakespeare roles, West End and Broadway productions, and iconic film performances. Dame Judi Dench is one of the most decorated actors in British history — winner of an Academy Award, eight BAFTA Awards, and nine Olivier Awards — whose love of the stage has never dimmed despite a glittering screen career. Jim Carter, best known as Carson in Downton Abbey, is himself a distinguished theatre actor and the perfect host for a conversation this good. Together on the National Theatre stage, the three of them are unstoppable.
#IanMcKellen #JudiDench #NationalTheatre #LiveTheatre #BritishTheatre
Hugh Jackman is Curly in the 1998 multi-Olivier Award-winning revival of Rodgers & Hammerstein's Oklahoma! – a joyful, all-singing, all-dancing musical theatre classic.
Step into a world of romance, rivalry and unforgettable music as cowboy Curly McClain sets out to win Laurey’s heart.
Watch landmark musical, captured live on stage, now streaming on ntathome.com
#hughjackman #oklahoma #musicaltheatre #musical
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We believe that great theatre sparks imagination and brings people together.
Every day we strive to make the world a better place through theatre; entertaining and inspiring audiences around the world, using our creativity, expertise and unique reach.
You’ll find us in theatres. In cinemas. In schools. And online.
--
Discover our work: https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/
Broadcast to cinemas worldwide: https://www.ntlive.com/
Streaming online: https://www.ntathome.com/
Subscribe on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/NationalTheatre
National Theatre Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nationaltheatre
National Theatre Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nationaltheatre
National Theatre TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@nationaltheatre
National Theatre Twitter: https://twitter.com/NationalTheatre
National Theatre Live Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ntlive
National Theatre Live Twitter: https://twitter.com/NTLive
About Oklahoma!
Oklahoma! is the first musical written by the duo of Rodgers and Hammerstein. The musical is based on Lynn Riggs's 1931 play, Green Grow the Lilacs. Set in farm country outside the town of Claremore, Indian Territory, in 1906, it tells the story of farm girl Laurey Williams and her courtship by two rival suitors, cowboy Curly McLain and the sinister and frightening farmhand Jud Fry. A secondary romance concerns cowboy Will Parker and his flirtatious fiancée, Ado Annie.
The original Broadway production opened on March 31, 1943. It was a box office hit and ran for an unprecedented 2,212 performances, later enjoying award-winning revivals, national tours, foreign productions and an Oscar-winning 1955 film adaptation. It has long been a popular choice for school and community productions. Rodgers and Hammerstein won a special Pulitzer Prize for Oklahoma! in 1944.
This musical, building on the innovations of the earlier Show Boat, epitomized the development of the "book musical", a musical play in which the songs and dances are fully integrated into a well-made story, with serious dramatic goals, that evokes genuine emotions other than amusement. In addition, Oklahoma! features musical themes, or motifs, that recur throughout the work to connect the music and story. A fifteen-minute "dream ballet" reflects Laurey's struggle with her feelings about two men, Curly and Jud.
Hugh Jackman is Curly in the 1998 multi-Olivier Award-winning revival of Rodgers & Hammerstein's Oklahoma! – a joyful, all-singing, all-dancing musical theatre classic.
Step into a world of romance, rivalry and unforgettable music as cowboy Curly McClain sets out to win Laurey’s heart.
Watch landmark musical, captured live on stage, now streaming on ntathome.com
#hughjackman #oklahoma #musicaltheatre #musical
--
We believe that great theatre sparks imagination and brings people together.
Every day we strive to make the world a better place through theatre; entertaining and inspiring audiences around the world, using our creativity, expertise and unique reach.
You’ll find us in theatres. In cinemas. In schools. And online.
--
Discover our work: https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/
Broadcast to cinemas worldwide: https://www.ntlive.com/
Streaming online: https://www.ntathome.com/
Subscribe on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/NationalTheatre
National Theatre Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nationaltheatre
National Theatre Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nationaltheatre
National Theatre TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@nationaltheatre
National Theatre Twitter: https://twitter.com/NationalTheatre
National Theatre Live Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ntlive
National Theatre Live Twitter: https://twitter.com/NTLive
About Oklahoma!
Oklahoma! is the first musical written by the duo of Rodgers and Hammerstein. The musical is based on Lynn Riggs's 1931 play, Green Grow the Lilacs. Set in farm country outside the town of Claremore, Indian Territory, in 1906, it tells the story of farm girl Laurey Williams and her courtship by two rival suitors, cowboy Curly McLain and the sinister and frightening farmhand Jud Fry. A secondary romance concerns cowboy Will Parker and his flirtatious fiancée, Ado Annie.
The original Broadway production opened on March 31, 1943. It was a box office hit and ran for an unprecedented 2,212 performances, later enjoying award-winning revivals, national tours, foreign productions and an Oscar-winning 1955 film adaptation. It has long been a popular choice for school and community productions. Rodgers and Hammerstein won a special Pulitzer Prize for Oklahoma! in 1944.
This musical, building on the innovations of the earlier Show Boat, epitomized the development of the "book musical", a musical play in which the songs and dances are fully integrated into a well-made story, with serious dramatic goals, that evokes genuine emotions other than amusement. In addition, Oklahoma! features musical themes, or motifs, that recur throughout the work to connect the music and story. A fifteen-minute "dream ballet" reflects Laurey's struggle with her feelings about two men, Curly and Jud.
Featuring Ben Daniels (The Normal Heart) and Laurie Kynaston (Long Day’s Journey into Night) as father and son, ‘the performance of the year’ (Time Out) is streaming from 21 May on National Theatre at Home.
It’s 1930s New York City, and one international financier’s luck has finally run out. Truths are uncovered and relationships are tested.
In his National Theatre debut, director Anthony Lau (The Crucible) brings a sharp, contemporary edge to Terence Rattigan’s tale of paternity and corruption.
A production from National Theatre.
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We believe that great theatre sparks imagination and brings people together.
Every day we strive to make the world a better place through theatre; entertaining and inspiring audiences around the world, using our creativity, expertise and unique reach.
You’ll find us in theatres. In cinemas. In schools. And online.
--
Discover our work: https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/
Broadcast to cinemas worldwide: https://www.ntlive.com/
Streaming online: https://www.ntathome.com/
Subscribe on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/NationalTheatre
National Theatre Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nationaltheatre
National Theatre Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nationaltheatre
National Theatre TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@nationaltheatre
National Theatre Twitter: https://twitter.com/NationalTheatre
National Theatre Live Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ntlive
National Theatre Live Twitter: https://twitter.com/NTLive
National Theatre presents NT Live: The Playboy of the Western World – starring Nicola Coughlan (Bridgerton), Éanna Hardwicke (The Sixth Commandment) and Siobhán McSweeney (Derry Girls). In cinemas from 28 May with National Theatre Live.
Find your local venue: https://www.ntlive.com/plays/the-playboy-of-the-western-world/
Nicola Coughlan (Bridgerton) joins Éanna Hardwicke (The Sixth Commandment) and Siobhán McSweeney (Derry Girls) in John Millington Synge’s riveting play of youth and self-discovery.
Pegeen Flaherty’s life is turned upside down when a young man walks into her pub claiming that he’s killed his father. Instead of being shunned, the killer becomes a local hero and begins to win hearts, that is until a second man unexpectedly arrives on the scene…
Filmed live on stage at the National Theatre, Caitríona McLaughlin directs this darkly funny tale full to the brim with secrets.
--
We believe that great theatre sparks imagination and brings people together.
Every day we strive to make the world a better place through theatre; entertaining and inspiring audiences around the world, using our creativity, expertise and unique reach.
You’ll find us in theatres. In cinemas. In schools. And online.
--
Discover our work: https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/
Broadcast to cinemas worldwide: https://www.ntlive.com/
Streaming online: https://www.ntathome.com/
Subscribe on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/NationalTheatre
National Theatre Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nationaltheatre
National Theatre Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nationaltheatre
National Theatre TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@nationaltheatre
National Theatre Twitter: https://twitter.com/NationalTheatre
National Theatre Live Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ntlive
National Theatre Live Twitter: https://twitter.com/NTLive
National Theatre presents NT Live: The Playboy of the Western World – starring Nicola Coughlan (Bridgerton), Éanna Hardwicke (The Sixth Commandment) and Siobhán McSweeney (Derry Girls). In cinemas from 28 May with National Theatre Live.
Find your local venue: https://www.ntlive.com/plays/the-playboy-of-the-western-world/
Nicola Coughlan (Bridgerton) joins Éanna Hardwicke (The Sixth Commandment) and Siobhán McSweeney (Derry Girls) in John Millington Synge’s riveting play of youth and self-discovery.
Pegeen Flaherty’s life is turned upside down when a young man walks into her pub claiming that he’s killed his father. Instead of being shunned, the killer becomes a local hero and begins to win hearts, that is until a second man unexpectedly arrives on the scene…
Filmed live on stage at the National Theatre, Caitríona McLaughlin directs this darkly funny tale full to the brim with secrets.
--
We believe that great theatre sparks imagination and brings people together.
Every day we strive to make the world a better place through theatre; entertaining and inspiring audiences around the world, using our creativity, expertise and unique reach.
You’ll find us in theatres. In cinemas. In schools. And online.
--
Discover our work: https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/
Broadcast to cinemas worldwide: https://www.ntlive.com/
Streaming online: https://www.ntathome.com/
Subscribe on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/NationalTheatre
National Theatre Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nationaltheatre
National Theatre Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nationaltheatre
National Theatre TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@nationaltheatre
National Theatre Twitter: https://twitter.com/NationalTheatre
National Theatre Live Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ntlive
National Theatre Live Twitter: https://twitter.com/NTLive
Hugh Jackman is Curly in the 1998 multi-Olivier Award-winning revival of Rodgers & Hammerstein's Oklahoma! – a joyful, all-singing, all-dancing musical theatre classic.
Step into a world of romance, rivalry and unforgettable music as cowboy Curly McClain sets out to win Laurey’s heart.
Watch landmark musical, captured live on stage, now streaming on ntathome.com
#hughjackman #oklahoma #musicaltheatre #musical
--
We believe that great theatre sparks imagination and brings people together.
Every day we strive to make the world a better place through theatre; entertaining and inspiring audiences around the world, using our creativity, expertise and unique reach.
You’ll find us in theatres. In cinemas. In schools. And online.
--
Discover our work: https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/
Broadcast to cinemas worldwide: https://www.ntlive.com/
Streaming online: https://www.ntathome.com/
Subscribe on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/NationalTheatre
National Theatre Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nationaltheatre
National Theatre Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nationaltheatre
National Theatre TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@nationaltheatre
National Theatre Twitter: https://twitter.com/NationalTheatre
National Theatre Live Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ntlive
National Theatre Live Twitter: https://twitter.com/NTLive
About Oklahoma!
Oklahoma! is the first musical written by the duo of Rodgers and Hammerstein. The musical is based on Lynn Riggs's 1931 play, Green Grow the Lilacs. Set in farm country outside the town of Claremore, Indian Territory, in 1906, it tells the story of farm girl Laurey Williams and her courtship by two rival suitors, cowboy Curly McLain and the sinister and frightening farmhand Jud Fry. A secondary romance concerns cowboy Will Parker and his flirtatious fiancée, Ado Annie.
The original Broadway production opened on March 31, 1943. It was a box office hit and ran for an unprecedented 2,212 performances, later enjoying award-winning revivals, national tours, foreign productions and an Oscar-winning 1955 film adaptation. It has long been a popular choice for school and community productions. Rodgers and Hammerstein won a special Pulitzer Prize for Oklahoma! in 1944.
This musical, building on the innovations of the earlier Show Boat, epitomized the development of the "book musical", a musical play in which the songs and dances are fully integrated into a well-made story, with serious dramatic goals, that evokes genuine emotions other than amusement. In addition, Oklahoma! features musical themes, or motifs, that recur throughout the work to connect the music and story. A fifteen-minute "dream ballet" reflects Laurey's struggle with her feelings about two men, Curly and Jud.
Catch this dynamic duo in The Playboy of the Western World in cinemas from 28 May.
Head to the National Theatre Live website to find your local screening.
Set and costume designed by Katie Davenport.
National Theatre presents NT Live: The Playboy of the Western World – starring Nicola Coughlan (Bridgerton), Éanna Hardwicke (The Sixth Commandment) and Siobhán McSweeney (Derry Girls). In cinemas from 28 May with National Theatre Live.
Find your local venue: https://www.ntlive.com/plays/the-playboy-of-the-western-world/
Nicola Coughlan (Bridgerton) joins Éanna Hardwicke (The Sixth Commandment) and Siobhán McSweeney (Derry Girls) in John Millington Synge’s riveting play of youth and self-discovery.
Pegeen Flaherty’s life is turned upside down when a young man walks into her pub claiming that he’s killed his father. Instead of being shunned, the killer becomes a local hero and begins to win hearts, that is until a second man unexpectedly arrives on the scene…
Filmed live on stage at the National Theatre, Caitríona McLaughlin directs this darkly funny tale full to the brim with secrets.
--
We believe that great theatre sparks imagination and brings people together.
Every day we strive to make the world a better place through theatre; entertaining and inspiring audiences around the world, using our creativity, expertise and unique reach.
You’ll find us in theatres. In cinemas. In schools. And online.
--
Discover our work: https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/
Broadcast to cinemas worldwide: https://www.ntlive.com/
Streaming online: https://www.ntathome.com/
Subscribe on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/NationalTheatre
National Theatre Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nationaltheatre
National Theatre Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nationaltheatre
National Theatre TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@nationaltheatre
National Theatre Twitter: https://twitter.com/NationalTheatre
National Theatre Live Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ntlive
National Theatre Live Twitter: https://twitter.com/NTLive
The women of Thebes will not be ignored. Fierce, unstoppable & visceral — Bacchae is Euripides reimagined for now. Stream the National Theatre's landmark production on NT at Home.
The women of the Bacchae will not be ignored. Fierce, unstoppable, and electric with purpose — they are a chorus of wild energy ready to shake Thebes to its core and liberate its women. But their god Dionysos has his own reckoning. In a showdown with his cousin King Pentheus, family loyalty, political power, and human desire are pushed to breaking point.
Bold, visceral, and unlike anything you have seen before — Euripides' ancient tragedy has never felt so urgent, so physical, or so alive in this adaptation by Nima Taleghani.
Now Streaming on National Theatre at Home
Bacchae marks the first time a debut play has ever been staged in the Olivier Theatre — a historic milestone that signals exactly the kind of bold new chapter this production represents. Directed by Indhu Rubasingham in her first production as Director of the National Theatre, Bacchae is an electrifying retelling of the Greek tragedy infused with spoken word, rhyme, and anarchic energy. Now available to stream in full on National Theatre at Home, with an exclusive Q&A with Indhu Rubasingham.
The Story
Dionysos is a refugee longing for acceptance but constantly facing discrimination — his group labelled terrorists by those in power. James McArdle's brilliantly drawn Pentheus is a thin-skinned autocrat who projects a strongman image but turns toxic when he cannot handle his feelings. Meanwhile the Bacchae — survivors, rebels, women who have had enough — maraud in the mountains, ready to bring chaos raining down on a city that tried to silence them. Among them is Sharon Small's wild-eyed Agave, who goes to gruesome extremes as the crisis reaches its shattering conclusion. National TheatreNational Theatre
This is a play about power, identity, desire, and what happens when the forces that hold society together finally snap.
The Creative Team
Written by Nima Taleghani — best known to audiences as Mr Farouk in Heartstopper — Bacchae is his debut play, designed by Robert Jones, choreographed by Kate Prince, with an original score by DJ Walde and sound design by Ben and Max Ringham.
The cast includes James McArdle (Angels in America), Clare Perkins (The Wife of Willesden), Ukweli Roach (Wolf), and Sharon Small (Nye), alongside a large and formidable ensemble company.
Indhu Rubasingham has said: "Nima's energetic retelling of Euripides' ancient tragedy is an exhilarating debut play that will fill the amphitheatre of the Olivier with spoken word and rhyme. Bacchae will be a riot of words, music and movement. This spirit of reinvention and telling ancient stories with a modern voice has long been a part of the National Theatre."
#Bacchae #NationalTheatre #NTatHome #GreekTheatre #IndihuRubasingham #NimahTaleghani
Head to the National Theatre at Home website to stream Bacchae in full.
Set and Costume by Robert Jones.
Did you know you can watch this production of The Importance of Being Earnest with Ncuti Gatwa and Hugh Skinner in full?
Head to the National Theatre at Home website to stream.
Our Green Store have the perfect looks for this year's theme: "Costume Art".
- Pink and black floral motif dress, originally worn by Amy Morgan as Queen Marie in Exit the King (2018) (costume designed by Anthony Ward).
- Purple brocade smoking jacket and blue trousers, originally worn by Giles Terrera as Guy Jacobs in Blues for an Alabama Sky (2022) (costume designed by Frankie Bradshaw).
- Purple wedding guest dress, jacket, and hat, originally worn by Dorothy Atkinson as Aunt Carol in Till the Stars Come Down (2024) (costume designed by Samal Blak).
Find out more about the National Theatre’s Costume & Prop Hire on our website.
Blues for an Alabama Sky and Til the Stars Come Down are also available to stream on National Theatre at Home!
You can watch Phoebe Waller-Bridge's iconic one-woman comedy on National Theatre at Home.
Head to our website to steam Fleabag.
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Set and Costume Designed by Holly Pigott.
Presented by DryWrite, Soho Theatre and Annapurna Theatre.
Available in the UK and Ireland only.
At the London Irish Centre, Emma Dabiri sat down with the director of The Playboy of the Western World, Caitríona McLaughlin, to chat about the show.
Watch to learn how Caitríona realised Nicola, Siobhan McSweeney, and Eanna Hardwicke would be perfect for their roles in her production of John Millington Synge's classic tale.
The Playboy of the Western World hits cinemas with National Theatre Live from 28 May.
Find your local screening on our website.
Hiran Abeysekera plays Hamlet in Robert Hastie's sharp, stylish, and darkly funny production of Shakespeare's famous tragedy.
Originally performed from 25 September to 22 November 2025 at the National Theatre in London, this production is now playing at Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York until 17 May 2026.
Stream Audra McDonald: I Am What I Am (Director's Cut) on https://www.ntathome.com
With a record-breaking six Tony Awards, alongside two Grammy Awards and an Emmy, Audra McDonald is a powerhouse of musical theatre.
Enjoy the electric atmosphere of the London Palladium and sing along to musical theatre classics, including 'I Am What I Am', 'Summertime' and 'Rose’s Turn', from the comfort of your own home.
Standing ovations all round – Audra McDonald: I Am What I Am (Director’s Cut) is streaming on National Theatre at Home.
Presented by David Treatman Creative.
Photography: Courtesy of David Treatman Creative.
Set designer: Stewart J Charlesworth
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We believe that great theatre sparks imagination and brings people together.
Every day we strive to make the world a better place through theatre; entertaining and inspiring audiences around the world, using our creativity, expertise and unique reach.
You’ll find us in theatres. In cinemas. In schools. And online.
--
Discover our work: https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/
Broadcast to cinemas worldwide: https://www.ntlive.com/
Streaming online: https://www.ntathome.com/
Subscribe on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/NationalTheatre
National Theatre Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nationaltheatre
National Theatre Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nationaltheatre
National Theatre TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@nationaltheatre
National Theatre Twitter: https://twitter.com/NationalTheatre
National Theatre Live Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ntlive
National Theatre Live Twitter: https://twitter.com/NTLive
Stream Audra McDonald: I Am What I Am (Director's Cut) on https://www.ntathome.com
With a record-breaking six Tony Awards, alongside two Grammy Awards and an Emmy, Audra McDonald is a powerhouse of musical theatre.
Enjoy the electric atmosphere of the London Palladium and sing along to musical theatre classics, including 'I Am What I Am', 'Summertime' and 'Rose’s Turn', from the comfort of your own home.
Standing ovations all round – Audra McDonald: I Am What I Am (Director’s Cut) is streaming on National Theatre at Home.
Presented by David Treatman Creative.
Photography: Courtesy of David Treatman Creative.
Set designer: Stewart J Charlesworth
--
We believe that great theatre sparks imagination and brings people together.
Every day we strive to make the world a better place through theatre; entertaining and inspiring audiences around the world, using our creativity, expertise and unique reach.
You’ll find us in theatres. In cinemas. In schools. And online.
--
Discover our work: https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/
Broadcast to cinemas worldwide: https://www.ntlive.com/
Streaming online: https://www.ntathome.com/
Subscribe on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/NationalTheatre
National Theatre Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nationaltheatre
National Theatre Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nationaltheatre
National Theatre TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@nationaltheatre
National Theatre Twitter: https://twitter.com/NationalTheatre
National Theatre Live Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ntlive
National Theatre Live Twitter: https://twitter.com/NTLive
Medea, with Helen McCrory and Danny Sapani is available to stream worldwide on the National Theatre Collection with Drama Online, and free for UK state schools (recommended for secondary students and older).
Also available to stream on our streaming platform, National Theatre at Home.
Find out more on our website.
Design by Tom Scutt.
The National Theatre began in 1963 with the first Artistic Director Lord Laurence Olivier begin directing and producing shows from The Old Vic Theatre. By 1977, the National Theatre moved into its current home on the South Bank. The building designed by Sir Denys Lasdun has become noted and famed for the brutalist concrete fly towers that overlook ...
Continuing our series on affordable theatre, guest blogger Nicole Ackman runs through the best places in London for younger theatregoers to get the most out of their Student ID. Do YOU know which blockbuster West End musical you can see for just £5?!
Jiminy Cricket makes his National Theatre stage debut tonight (13 December 2017) in Dennis Kelly's stage adaptation of the 1940 Walt Disney screen classic PINOCCHIO. Watch #StageFave Audrey Brisson bring him to life - and remind yourself of the Disney original. You'll be giving a little whistle all the way to the South Bank and back...
We won't be growing any long noses in the #StageFaves office because it's totally true - PINOCCHIO is coming to the National Theatre this winter as part of the newly announced season (which includes the #StageFaves-filled FOLLIES). With the writing brains behind the RSC's MATILDA and with songs and score from the original Walt Disney film, it's certainly going to be a treat for all the family...
As part of the National Theatre's announcement of its wide-ranging plans for the next year, there are two productions that are cause for major excitement amongst musical lovers: a star-studded revival of Sondheim's FOLLIES and a world premiere stage adaptation of PINOCCHIO directed by John Tiffany (Once, Harry Potter)...
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