
National Theatre Live: King Lear
β 8.1 Β· 2018 Β· 227m Β· Drama
Considered by many to be the greatest tragedy ever written, King Lear sees two ageing fathers β one a King, one his courtier β reject the children who truly love them. Their blindness unleashes a tornado of pitiless ambition and treachery, as family and state are plunged into a violent power struggle with bitter ends.
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A group of young friends convene in the countryside to shoot a horror movie. But an experiment with LSD sees normal boundaries between them collapsing, and tragedy subsequently striking.
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Fifty-Four Days
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When tragedy strikes, a spirited young woman turns to wild swimming in search of answers. By swimming each day at dawn and forming an unlikely friendship, she learns to accept her grief and the grief of those around her.
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The Golden Coach
1952 Β· β 7.1
A viceroy, a nobleman and a bullfighter court a comedy-troupe actress in 18th-century Peru.
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Chickenhead
1986
It is a tragedy, set among low-lifes on the outskirts of Budapest. Dramatic Exchange describes it as "Widely considered to be the most important Hungarian play of the last 20 years". The odd title of the play refers in the first instance to the chicken heads that an old woman feeds to her cat. However, it can also be taken to refer more broadly to the obtuse behaviour of the main characters in the play. The play is an odd mixture of pathos and nihilism, written against the bleak background of Stalinist totalitarianism from which Hungary was emerging. As with much modern drama, there is no hero in the play. The only noble behaviour that one can find belongs to one of the characters in the past, when he was a child, but he is no longer as he was. The hint that what once existed might be achieved again is the only faint ray of hope in a very bleak view of the human condition.
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The Good Person of Szechwan
1973
When the gods appear in disguise the only person who shows them hospitality is the young girl Shen Te and for this she is awarded by them. After a while she finds her new life has also brought new problems.
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The Gin Game
2003 Β· β 6.6
This powerfully bittersweet comedy follows the relationship that develops between nursing home residents Fonsia (Mary Tyler Moore) and Weller (Dick Van Dyke) during a series of gin games in which their ailments, misfortunes and losses are exposed in funny, honest and increasingly heated moments.
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The Lemon Drop Kid
1934 Β· β 6.3
The Lemon Drop Kid is a fast-talking racetrack bum who swindles $100 from an old, ailing man. He takes it on the lam with his sidekick, The Professor.
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Anonymous
2011 Β· β 6.4
Set against the backdrop of the succession of Queen Elizabeth I, and the Essex Rebellion against her, the story advances the theory that it was in fact Edward De Vere, Earl of Oxford who penned Shakespeare's plays.
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Cadaver
2020 Β· β 5.6
In the aftermath of a nuclear disaster, a starving family finds hope in a charismatic hotel owner. Lured by the prospect of a free dinner, they discover that the evening's entertainment blurs the lines between performance and reality. Will they wind up the spectators or the spectacle?
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National Theatre Live: Les Blancs
2019 Β· β 6
An African country teeters on the edge of civil war. A society prepares to drive out its colonial present and claim an independent future. Racial tensions boil over. Tshembe, returned home from England for his fatherβs funeral, finds himself in the eye of the storm.
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A Memory of Two Mondays
1971 Β· β 9
Workers in an auto parts warehouse in 1933 New York City inhabit a bleak, dead-end world in the depths of the Depression where, at least, they have jobs. Introduced by its playwright, Arthur Miller, it was the first in a series of NET Playhouse programs concerning life in America during the Depression years.
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