Michael Balogun plays Delroy with 'firecracker energy’ in this new work by Clint Dyer and Roy Williams, which explores a Black working class man searching for truth and confronting his relationship with Great Britain.
Delroy
Michael Balogun plays Delroy with 'firecracker energy’ in this new work by Clint Dyer and Roy Williams, which explores a Black working class man searching for truth and confronting his relationship with Great Britain.
2020-11-27
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A new version for younger audiences by Bijan Sheibani and Ben Power. Originally staged as part of the National Theatre’s Shakespeare for younger audiences programme. This archival recording was captured in 2017. This contemporary production sees a company of eight tell the most famous love story of all time, set against a vivid urban backdrop bursting with excitement, colour, dance and song. A swift, contemporary celebration of Shakespeare’s masterpiece, Bijan Sheibani’s thrilling production brings Romeo and Juliet to life for a new generation.
In his small pub in the northern English town of Oldham, Harry is something of a local celebrity. But what's the second-best hangman in England to do on the day they've abolished hanging? Amongst the cub reporters and pub regulars dying to hear Harry's reaction to the news, his old assistant Syd and the peculiar Mooney lurk with very different motives for their visit.
An African country teeters on the edge of civil war. A society prepares to drive out its colonial present and claim an independent future. Racial tensions boil over. Tshembe, returned home from England for his father’s funeral, finds himself in the eye of the storm.
Owen, the prodigal son, returns to rural Donegal from Dublin. With him are two British army officers. Their ambition is to create a map of the area, replacing the Gaelic names with English. It is an administrative act with radical consequences.
Why is Justice blind? Is she impartial? Or is she blinkered? Friends take opposing briefs in a rape case. The key witness is a woman whose life seems a world away from theirs. At home, their own lives begin to unravel as every version of the truth is challenged. Nina Raine’s powerful, painful, funny play sifts the evidence from every side and puts justice herself in the dock. Consent received its world premiere in a co-production with Out of Joint at the National Theatre in April 2017. This archive recording was captured on 9th May, 2017.
We mostly think of robots as work machines, as efficient and precise executors of tasks. In German industry, they barely look like people, to avoid emotional complications. Unlike in Asia, where humanoid robots have already been developed for some time, for example for care-work or as sex partners. The external similarity to human beings makes the acceptance of machines easier. However, if the machine is too similar to a human, we begin to feel mistrust: what is human, what is machine? Japanese robotics researchers call this weird similarity the “uncanny valley”. For his play, Stefan Kaegi works with a writer and playwright for the first time: Thomas Melle allowed an animatronic double of himself to be made. This humanoid takes the author’s place and throws up questions: what does it mean for the original when the copy takes over? Does the original get to know himself better through his electronic double? Do the copy and his original compete or do they help each other?
For generations, African men have gathered in barber shops to discuss the world. These are places where the banter can be barbed and the truth is always telling. Follow along as we leap from a barber shop in Peckham to Johannesburg, Harare, Kampala, Lagos and Accra over the course of a single day.
An updated version of Strindberg’s play examining class and social differences. Julie, the daughter of an MP, seduces her father's chauffeur, despite his being engaged to the maid.
An ageing monarch. A kingdom divided. A child’s love rejected. As Lear’s world descends into chaos, all that he once believed is brought into question. One of the greatest works in Western literature, King Lear explores the very nature of human existence: love and duty, power and loss, good and evil.
A new English adaptation of the classic French tragedy Phèdre by Jean Racine (1639-1699). It retells the ancient Greek tale of the wife of the Atenian King Theseus, who conceived a forbidden love for his son (by an earlier wife) Hyppolytus. All ends badly for all.
From her beginnings as a destitute orphan, Jane Eyre’s spirited heroine faces life’s obstacles head-on, surviving poverty, injustice and the discovery of bitter betrayal before taking the ultimate decision to follow her heart.
Marquise de Merteuil, former lover of Vicomte de Valmont, incites him to corrupt the innocent Cécile de Volanges before her wedding night, but Valmont has targeted the peerlessly virtuous and beautiful Madame de Tourvel.
Set in Richmond, Virginia in October 1864, tells the story of a Union spy working to seize control of the telegraph office.
Passion is a musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and a book by James Lapine. The story was adapted from Ettore Scola's film Passione d'Amore. Central themes include love, sex, obsession, illness, passion, beauty, power and manipulation. Set in 19th century Italy, the plot concerns a young soldier and the changes in him brought about by the obsessive love of Fosca, his Colonel's homely, ailing cousin.
Reason and judgement prove no match for the tsunami of mutual passion engulfing Mark Antony, one of the three joint rulers of the Roman republic, and Cleopatra, the seductive queen of Egypt. Surrendering everything to their desires, they open the floodgates to a civil conflict that will shake the very foundations of their world.
When the King of France (Peter Hutt) demands that John (Tom McCamus) relinquish his crown in favor of his nephew, the young Prince Arthur, war is the inevitable result. Excommunication, attempted atrocity, rebellion and assassination all contribute to a political turmoil and personal grief for a mother who has lost her son.
Childlike in his innocence but grotesque in form, Frankenstein’s bewildered creature is cast out into a hostile universe by his horror-struck maker. Meeting with cruelty wherever he goes, the friendless Creature, increasingly desperate and vengeful, determines to track down his creator and strike a terrifying deal. Urgent concerns of scientific responsibility, parental neglect, cognitive development and the nature of good and evil are embedded within this thrilling and deeply disturbing tale.
For sixty years, Elizabeth II has met each of her twelve Prime Ministers in a weekly audience at Buckingham Palace, a meeting like no other in British public life, it is private.
Playwright Clifford Odets' portrait of the Great Depression unfolds in the modest two-family home of Leo and Clara Gordon as misfortune strikes them and the people running with them. Opened on Broadway in 1935, it became one of the Group Theatre's most controversial plays and Odets' favorite.
A witch hunt is beginning in Arthur Miller's captivating parable of power with Erin Doherty (The Crown) and Brendan Cowell (Yerma). Raised to be seen but not heard, a group of young women in Salem suddenly find their words have an almighty power. As a climate of fear, vendetta and accusation spreads through the community, no one is safe from trial. Lindsey Turner (Hamlet) directs this contemporary new staging, design by Tony award winner Es Devlin. Captured live from the Olivier stage of the national theater.