10 National Theatre Live productions we'd love to watch from home, from Angels in America to Follies

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They might be closed but London’s theatres have really been stepping up to the plate.

There are live streams, screenings and special videos galore being released to keep us entertained in lockdown.

The National Theatre announced it will be making some of its biggest hitters available to watch online for free. The first show to be streamed - One Man Two Guvnors - will be broadcast this week (April 2), with Twelfth Night, Jane Eyre and Treasure Island completing the line-up.

Making these shows available to watch online is more complicated than it seems, due to the number of rights holders involved with the recordings. But the National Theatre say more screenings are set to be announced in the coming weeks, so we've trawled through the NT Live back catalogue and put together a wish list of the shows we'd love to see.

This House

Johan Persson

Chronicling the ramshackle ways that Harold Wilson’s 1974 Labour government scraped together votes during a hung parliament, this was James Graham’s first major hit play. It premiered in 2012 in what was then named the Cottesloe (now the Dorfman), before transferring to the NT’s Olivier Theatre – where it was recorded for an NT Live – and later enjoying a successful West End run at the Garrick Theatre in 2016. To audiences more familiar with hung parliaments thanks to the Tory/Lib Dem coalition of 2010 (which Graham wrote about for a 2015 Channel 4 film), the play’s twists and turns still seemed surreal. In 2017, his insight into electoral anomalies saw the world of Twitter turn to him to decipher the meaning of the Theresa May’s Tories losing their majority while remaining the largest party.

Frankenstein

Cumber-mania was only just beginning to reach its zenith when Benedict Cumberbatch starred alongside Jonny Lee Miller in this stage adaptation of Mary Shelley’s novel. Directed by Danny Boyle, there was a twist; the two leads alternated the roles of doctor and creature each night, meaning the 2011 production was captured for the screen twice. The brilliance of both saw them jointly awarded the Best Actor trophy at that year’s Evening Standard Theatre Awards.

Hedda Gabler

Jan Versweyveld

We’re feeling just a bit devastated that Ruth Wilson’s return to the stage – a 24-hour marathon performance as part of LIFT Festival – is among many cancellations brought about by the coronavirus pandemic. Her last theatrical role was back in 2016 as the lead in Ibsen’s classic play; adapted by Patrick Marber and directed by Ivo van Hove, Wilson won plaudits for her performance alongside Kyle Soller and Rafe Spall. In the production, Wilson as Hedda listened to Joni Mitchell a lot and stapled flowers to the living room wall – we can’t say we’ve done that yet, but it might not be long if we’re stuck inside for much longer.

The Deep Blue Sea

Helen McCrory’s heartbreaking portrayal of a lonely married woman pining for the affection of her lover was one of the theatrical highlights of 2016. Blighted by the social conventions of the Fifties, she gets increasingly close to the edge. Carrie Cracknell, who also directed McCrory in Medea at the National in 2014, helmed the revival of one of Terence Rattigan’s greatest plays. Come to think of it, we’d like to see Medea again as well, please.

Angels in America

Helen Maybanks

We all know you need to put a proper stint in with Tony Kushner – his most recent play, The Visit, was running at three and half hours before coronavirus stopped the production’s run. But that’s nothing on his most famous work, Angels in America, which is in two parts and lasts almost eight hours in total. Marianne Elliott’s award-winning 2017 revival, which later transferred to Broadway, was beamed to cinemas worldwide – and who now can say they don’t have the time to watch the whole thing again? The stellar cast featured Nathan Lane, Denise Gough, Russell Tovey, James McArdle and Andrew Garfield (who picked up the Best Actor award for his performance at that year’s Evening Standard Theatre Awards).

Nine Night

Natasha Gordon’s debut play was an immediate hit in 2018, transferring to Trafalgar Studios and making history as the first play by a black British female playwright to run in the West End. She also picked up the Charles Wintour Award for Most Promising Playwright at that year's Evening Standard Theatre Awards, and revealed that Nine Night was the first thing she’d written since her teenage diaries. It follows the Jamaican ritual of a nine-night wake for the dead and featured a particularly stand-out performance from Cecilia Noble, which we would just love to see again.

Follies

Put Imelda Staunton in a Sondheim musical and you’ll get the performance of a lifetime every single show. The 2017 revival of Follies directed by Dominic Cooke was no different. But it was a group effort across the cast that made this show such a hit, returning two years later sans Staunton. Both productions were simply stunning to watch, framed by Vicki Mortimer’s set of a crumbling theatre, which was nothing short of “wow”. We have all fingers and toes crossed that the planned reunion of Staunton and Cooke will go ahead with Hello Dolly in the summer.

Small Island

Brinkhoff/Mögenburg

This glorious adaptation of Andrea Levy’s novel about the Windrush generation is due to return to the NT’s Olivier stage in October, so we’re crossing our fingers that the production’s return goes ahead. But if it doesn’t we’d love to see this epic story, directed by Rufus Norris and captured for NT Live last year, made available to watch in our homes. With brilliant performances from a 40-strong cast, it was one of the highlights of the last year in theatre and is guaranteed to cheer audiences up across the country.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

Simon Stephens’s adaptation of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time was a runaway success. It was another Marianne Elliott production and won seven Olivier Awards in 2012, with the brilliant original cast featuring Luke Treadaway, Niamh Cusack, Nicola Walker and Una Stubbs. Since then, it has been in the West End, around the world and back to the West End again in 2018. Based on Mark Haddon’s bestselling book, it’s about Christopher John Francis Boone, a teenage "mathematician with some behavioural difficulties" who decides to investigate the mystery of the death of his neighbour’s dog Wellington.

Amadeus

Marc Brenner

Amadeus had its premiere at the National Theatre in 1979, and a hit revival in 2016 was filmed for NT Live. Performances by Lucian Msamati as Salieri and Adam Gillen as Mozart made Michael Longhurst’s production “a soaring song of genius and jealousy” according to our review – despite the fact that this Mozart admitted he couldn’t play a note of the piano. There’s no need, though; the cast was accompanied by six opera singers and 20 members of the Southbank Sinfonia, making this a decadent show that deserves to be seen again and again.

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