National Theatre Live: Of Mice and Men

A powerful portrait of the American spirit and a heartbreaking testament to the bonds of friendship.

Curtain Up

In a small town in the 1950s a repertory company meets on Monday morning to start rehearsing the following week's play. This is a ghastly thing written by the aunt of one of the theatre's directors. The producer doesn't try to hide his annoyance about it, and is further exercised when the authoress herself arrives to help. The cast have to try and sort out real-life problems that keep intruding as they wrestle with the play's dire dialogue.

Phèdre

Hèdre is queen but doesn't love the king. She prefers his son Hippolytus, whom he had from a first marriage, to Theseus. A guilty love, hidden by feigned hatred, that makes her suffer and perish, and that she can't keep from confessing as soon as she hears of the king's death. But Hippolyte doesn't love her. And the monarch is only wounded. Ashamed, the queen can no longer look at him. Oenone, her confidante, tries to save her by making the king believe that the outrage comes from his son. Fanned by Theseus, the fury of the gods strikes Hippolytus. The adulteress kills herself.

Fatty at San Diego

Fatty induces wife to let him take a day off to go to the celebration at San Diego. He has a wonderful time, flirting with the girls, breaking up a parade, fighting the police force and falling into the fountain with him, escapes, and with the crowd after him, leaps into the river. Here he rescues a little boy and becomes a hero. He goes home to wife in a bedraggled condition, tells of rescue and is set upon a pedestal. Wife, as a reward, takes him to the movies at night and sees husband flirting and fighting in the fountain, where some enterprising cameraman caught him. That explaining, as she thought, the bedraggled state in which he arrived home, she turns and beats him all the way home.

Roma

A virtually plotless, gaudy, impressionistic portrait of Rome through the eyes of one of its most famous citizens.

The Taste of Others

Unpolished and ultra-pragmatic industrialist Jean-Jacques Castella reluctantly attends Racine's tragedy "Berenice" in order to see his niece play a bit part. He is taken with the play's strangely familiar-looking leading lady Clara Devaux. During the course of the show, Castella soon remembers that he once hired and then promptly fired the actress as an English language tutor. He immediately goes out and signs up for language lessons. Thinking that he is nothing but an ill-tempered philistine with bad taste, Clara rejects him until Castella charms her off her feet.

High School Musical

A popular high school athlete and an academically gifted girl get roles in the school musical and develop a friendship that threatens East High's social order.

The King Is Alive

Stranded in the heat of a barren African desert, eleven bus-passengers shelter in the remnants of an abandoned town. As rescue grows more remote by the day and anxiety deepens, an idea emerges: why not stage a play. However the choice of King Lear only manages to plunge this disparate group of travelers into turmoil as they struggle to overcome both nature's wrath and their own morality.

Children of Paradise

In a chaotic 19th-century Paris teeming with aristocrats, thieves, psychics, and courtesans, theater mime Baptiste is in love with the mysterious actress Garance. But Garance, in turn, is loved by three other men: pretentious actor Frederick, conniving thief Lacenaire, and Count Edouard of Montray.

Volpone

The Man Who Knew Too Little

An American gets a ticket for an audience participation game in London, then gets involved in a case of mistaken identity. As an international plot unravels around him, he thinks it's all part of the act.

Cookie's Fortune

Conflict arises in the small town of Holly Springs when an old woman's death causes a variety of reactions among family and friends.

Übü király

The Empty King created a mythical figure and a whole world from grotesque, archetypal images. The drama was originally conceived as a student tirade against a teacher at Jarry's school, the Lyceum of Rennes. This teacher, Hébert, was the target of public ridicule. In 1888, at the age of 15, Jarry wrote a puppet play about the exploits of the Woolly Tartar and staged it to the amusement of his friends. The figure of Übü is a crude, cruel caricature of the foolish, selfish bourgeoisie as seen through the unrelenting gaze of a schoolboy; but this Rabelaisian figure, in all his falstaffian greed and cowardice, is more than a mere social satire. It is a terrifying picture of man's animal nature, his evil and cruelty. The Katona József Theatre in Budapest premiered Jarry's play in 1984, and it ran continuously for more than 10 years.

Le Prête-nom

Tormenting the Hen

A lesbian couple experiences microaggressions at a workshop upstate. Claire and her fiancée Monica embark from the boisterous streets of New York City to the Berkshires, where Claire has been invited to stage her latest work at a rural theater company. While Claire's actors question her ability to write heterosexual dialogue, Monica encounters her own source of micro-aggression in the form of Mutty, the groundskeeper.

Le Tombeur

Les Voisins du dessus

Doctor Faustus

The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus, to give it its full title, by Christopher Marlowe, was first published in 1604, at least twelve years after its first performance, although the basic story of the play is much older. Having decided he has accumulated all he can of conventional knowledge, Doctor Faustus turns to magic in a quest for greater truths. Before long, he ends up selling his soul to the devil – the famous “Faustian pact” that has entered everyday language. Dr Faustus gradually realizes his terrible mistake. He apparently repents, but finally dies, the devil coming to collect his soul, and his friends the dismembered body.

The Making of a Superhero Musical

A mockumentary following the troubled production of Clockmen: The Musical, focusing on a cosplayer-turned-actress who reacts to the stress of the production in a rather unusual way.

Kind der Donau

Marika is a cheerful girl who lives on the Danube aboard an old barge she inherited from her father. She works as a waitress in her aunt's inn, entertaining the guests with singing and dancing. Her greatest dream is to save enough money to repair the old barge and sail down the Danube. One day, she meets three young artists, Georg, Oskar, and Christoph, who all fall in love with her. Together, they put on an open-air revue and raise the necessary money. And with Georg, Marika is lucky in love.