It's amazing to think that National Theatre Live is 10 years old this year. On 25th June, we'll be marking a decade since their first-ever performance: Phédre starring Academy Award winner Helen Mirren.
Since then NT Live has continued to grow and grow. Recent broadcasts include Antony and Cleopatra with Ralph Fiennes and Sophie Okonedo, Julius Caesar with David Morrissey and Ben Whishaw, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof with Sienna Miller, Follies with Imelda Staunton, Yerma with Billie Piper, and Angels in America with Andrew Garfield and Russell Tovey.
In anticipation of this special summer birthday, we've rounded up some essential NT Live facts. Scroll down to find out what they are, as well as details of must-see upcoming performances.
What do we need to know about NT Live?
- Broadcast from 20 stages in the UK to more than 3,500 cinema screens around the world over 10 years
- Almost 130,000 screenings
- Nearly 9 million global audience
- Over 100 live broadcasts and encores programmed in venues
- Over 80 productions broadcast
- Currently in 2500 venues across 65 countries – started in 280 venues across 19 countries 700 cinemas in the UK, which is 90%
- Hamlet with Benedict Cumberbatch is the most popular NT Live production, which has been seen by more than 900,000 people
- Rory Kinnear is the actor who has appeared in the most NT Live productions, with six to his name (Hamlet, The Last of the Haussmans, Othello, Threepenny Opera, Young Marx and Macbeth)
What are the upcoming NT Live broadcasts?
NT Live: All My Sons (released 14th May)
Sally Field and Bill Pullman star in Arthur Miller's blistering drama. Broadcast live to cinemas from The Old Vic on Tuesday 14 May 2019. America, 1947. Despite hard choices and even harder knocks, Joe and Kate Keller are a success story. They have built a home, raised two sons and established a thriving business. But nothing lasts forever and their contented lives, already shadowed by the loss of their eldest boy to war, are about to shatter. With the return of a figure from the past, long buried truths are forced to the surface and the price of their American dream is laid bare. Jeremy Herrin (NT Live: This House, People, Places & Things) directs a cast including Jenna Coleman (Victoria), and Colin Morgan (Merlin). All My Sons is an Old Vic co-production with Headlong.
Click here to book your tickets for NT Live: All My Sons.
NT Live: Small Island (27th June)
Andrea Levy's Orange Prize-winning novel Small Island comes to life in an epic new theatre adaptation. Experience the play in cinemas, filmed live on stage as part of National Theatre Live's 10th birthday. Small Island embarks on a journey from Jamaica to Britain, through the Second World War to 1948 – the year the HMT Empire Windrush docked at Tilbury. The play follows three intricately connected stories. Hortense yearns for a new life away from rural Jamaica, Gilbert dreams of becoming a lawyer, and Queenie longs to escape her Lincolnshire roots. Hope and humanity meet stubborn reality as the play traces the tangled history of Jamaica and the UK. A company of 40 actors take to the stage of the National Theatre in this timely and moving story.
Click here to book your tickets for NT Live: Small Island.
NT Live: The Lehman Trilogy (25th July)
The story of a family and a company that changed the world, told in three parts on a single evening. Academy Award-winner Sam Mendes (Skyfall, The Ferryman) directs Simon Russell Beale, Adam Godley and Ben Miles who play the Lehman Brothers, their sons and grandsons. On a cold September morning in 1844 a young man from Bavaria stands on a New York dockside. Dreaming of a new life in the new world. He is joined by his two brothers and an American epic begins. 163 years later, the firm they establish – Lehman Brothers – spectacularly collapses into bankruptcy, and triggers the largest financial crisis in history. This critically acclaimed and five-time Olivier Award nominated play features stunning set design from Es Devlin (NT Live: Hamlet) and will be broadcast live from London’s West End as part of National Theatre Live’s 10th Birthday season.
Click here to book your tickets for NT Live: The Lehman Trilogy.
NT Live: One Man, Two Guvnors (Encore, 26th September)
Featuring a Tony Award-winning performance from host of the The Late Late Show, James Corden, the hilarious West End and Broadway hit One Man, Two Guvnors returns to cinemas to mark National Theatre Live’s 10th birthday. Fired from his skiffle band, Francis Henshall becomes minder to Roscoe Crabbe, a small time East End hood, now in Brighton to collect £6,000 from his fiancée’s dad. But Roscoe is really his sister Rachel posing as her own dead brother, who’s been killed by her boyfriend Stanley Stubbers. Holed up at The Cricketers’ Arms, the permanently ravenous Francis spots the chance of an extra meal ticket and takes a second job with one Stanley Stubbers, who is hiding from the police and waiting to be re-united with Rachel. To prevent discovery, Francis must keep his two guvnors apart. Simple.
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