Big-name stars on screen at Macrobert
The popular National Theatre Live series continues at the Macrobert Arts Centre over the next few weeks.
Billie Piper adopts her Evening Standard Best Actress role in Yerma on Thursday, August 31.
She plays a young woman driven to the unthinkable by her desperate desire to have a child in Simon Stone’s radical production of Lorca’s achingly powerful masterpiece.
Set in contemporary London, Piper’s portrayal of a woman in her thirties desperate to conceive builds with elemental force to a staggering, shocking, climax.
The live event screening of Tony Kushner’s epic two-part magical realist AIDS drama and multi-award-winning play Angels in America Parts One and Two will be screened on September 7 and 14.
It’s America in the mid-1980s. In the midst of the AIDS crisis and a conservative Reagan administration, New Yorkers grapple with life and death, love and sex, heaven and hell.
Andrew Garfield plays Prior Walter along with a cast including Denise Gough, Nathan Lane and Russell Tovey.
Benedict Cumberbatch takes on role of Hamlet in Shakespeare’s great tragedy on October 5.
Broadcast first in 2015, the performance has been seen by more than 750,000 people worldwide.
As a country arms itself for war, a family tears itself apart. Forced to avenge his father’s death but paralysed by the task ahead, Hamlet rages against the impossibility of his predicament, threatening both his sanity and the security of the state.
Music also takes centre stage in the Royal Opera House season.
On September 20 and 24, Mozart’s glorious opera The Magic Flute is brought to life. Prince Tamino promises the Queen of the Night that he will rescue her daughter Pamina from the enchanter Sarastro. He begins his quest, accompanied by the bird-catcher Papageno – but all is not as it seems.
Puccini’s La Boheme is on screen on October 3 and 4. When Rodolfo, a penniless poet, meets Mimì, a seamstress, they fall instantly in love. But their happiness is threatened when Rodolfo learns that Mimì is gravely ill.
Puccini’s romantic depiction of bohemian Paris, with memorable music and a love story drawn from everyday life, has captivated audiences around the world, making La Boheme one of the bestloved of all operas. It was first performed in Covent Garden in 1897 and has had more than 500 performances there since.
Christopher Wheeldon’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is an explosion of colour, stage magic and inventive, sophisticated choreography and it will show at the Macrobert on October 26.
For more information log on to www.macrobertartscentre. org.