Series of free plays online with National Theatre Live service
A REGULAR feature in the currently closed Whale Theatre in Greystones is ‘National Theatre Live (NTL)’.
NTL brings British theatre to cinemas and smaller venues all over the world. They will be screening a full-length play every Thursday at 7 p.m. The plays will then be free to stream for a week. Danny Boyle’s ‘Frankenstein’ was a recent offering, with Benedict Cumberbatch as the creature and Jonny Lee Miller as Victor Frankenstein. Currently streaming is ‘Anthony and Cleopatra’, starring Ralph Fiennes and Sophia Okendo, available until 7 p.m. on Thursday, May 14.
At the fringes of a war-torn empire, the Egyptian Queen Cleopatra and Mark Antony have fallen fiercely in love. In a tragic fight between devotion and duty, obsession becomes a catalyst for war.
Ralph Fiennes (‘The English Patient’, ‘Spectre’) and Sophie Okonedo (‘Chimerica’, ‘Hotel Rwanda’) play Shakespeare’s famous fated couple in his great tragedy of politics, passion and power.
At 7 p.m. on Thursday, May 14, the next play available will be Innua Ellams’ ‘Barbershop Chronicles’.
Newsroom, political platform, local hotspot, confession box, preacher-pulpit and football stadium – 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. The play leaps from a barber shop in Peckham to Johannesburg, Harare, Kampala, Lagos and Accra, over the course of a single day.
The performances can be viewed on the National Theatre YouTube channel.