Hampstead theatre and the Guardian have teamed up to stream a series of acclaimed productions for free. #AIWW: The Arrest of Ai Weiwei, directed by James Macdonald, is based on a book by Barnaby Martin about the 81-day detention and interrogation of Ai Weiwei by the Chinese authorities in 2011. Benedict Wong stars as the artist and activist in Howard Brenton’s gripping play. The production will be available to watch until 10pm on 3 May.
North Country
Tajinder Singh Hayer’s play brought a postapocalyptic vision of Bradford to the basement of an abandoned Marks & Spencer when it was staged in 2016. Created for Freedom Studios, it follows three teenagers grappling with the aftermath of a plague. A live cast of the production was created for mobile devices and that version will be available on YouTube for free until 7 May. Director Alex Chisholm says that when they started “making digital live performance via mobile phones easy and low cost, we had no idea how urgent that might feel right now”.
National Theatre at Home
The NT has risen to the occasion by unveiling a mighty lineup of some of its greatest hits, to be streamed online on Thursdays at 7pm and then available for seven days. Nick Dear’s adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, staged in 2011, had the inspired idea of Benedict Cumberbatch and Jonny Lee Miller alternating between the roles of Victor Frankenstein and the Creature on different nights. Audiences will be able to see both actors in each role, as two versions will be shown on consecutive evenings (30 April and 1 May) and available for a week. Simon Godwin’s epic 2018 production of Antony and Cleopatra, starring Fiennes and Okonedo as the tragic lovers, will be streamed on 7 May.
English National Ballet
Tamara Rojo’s brilliant company have a schedule of weekly streams from their archive on Wednesdays, available free for 48 hours afterwards. Rudolf Nureyev’s Romeo & Juliet, at Bristol Hippodrome in 2015 with Alina Cojocaru and Isaac Hernández as the star-crossed lovers, will receive its online premiere on 6 May. Next, on 13 May, is Azure Barton’s Fantastic Beings, performed at Sadler’s Wells in 2018 as part of ENB’s Voices of America triple bill.
Royal Shakespeare Company
Our revels have temporarily ended in theatres but you can watch a groundbreaking effects-laden version of The Tempest, with Simon Russell Beale as Prospero, with a subscription (or 14-day free trial) to the online service Marquee TV. Antony and Cleopatra with Josette Simon and Richard II with David Tennant are two of the other gems in the selection of Royal Shakespeare Company plays available. But there are also six RSC productions available to watch free on BBC iPlayer: Hamlet starring Paapa Essiedu, Macbeth with Christopher Eccleston, Much Ado About Nothing with Edward Bennett and Michelle Terry, Othello with Hugh Quarshie and Lucian Msamati, Romeo and Juliet with Bally Gill and Karen Fishwick, and The Merchant of Venice with Makram J Khoury.
to a simple, rock’n’roll … song
It may hail the alligator and watusi dance crazes of the 60s but music from Patti Smith’s blistering 1975 album, Horses, drives some of Michael Clark’s most deliriously thrilling modern choreography in the first act of this 2017 Barbican production now on BBC iPlayer. These moves are as arresting as any guitar riff, matching Smith’s cantering repetition and a blizzard of trippy visuals from Charles Atlas. The second act celebrates Erik Satie and the third pays tribute to David Bowie.
Under the Orange Tree: Dame Judi Dench
Not a play but an enlightening conversation with someone who knows a thing or two about them. DJD chats to Gyles Brandreth in this 2017 event at Richmond’s Orange Tree theatre. Their 90-minute discussion ranges back to her performances as Juliet and Ophelia at the Old Vic in the late 1950s. It’s available to rent. The Orange Tree has also made available for free its 2019 staging of Amsterdam, co-produced with Actors Touring Company and Theatre Royal Plymouth, directed by Matthew Xia.
Crongton Knights
There’s beatboxing, bantz and bags of energy in this adaptation of Alex Wheatle’s award-winning YA novel, which follows six kids on a mission to retrieve a mobile phone from their neighbouring estate. Adapted by Emteaz Husain, it’s a co-production between Pilot Theatre, Coventry’s Belgrade, Derby theatre and York Theatre Royal. Their tour has been cut short but Crongton Knights can be streamed for free, introduced by Wheatle, Hussain and co-directors Esther Richardson and Corey Campbell. Available until 9 May.
The Winter’s Tale
Christopher Wheeldon’s three-act story ballet spins a royal tale of magic and banishment. See it for an Edward Watson masterclass in madness; Lauren Cuthbertson’s heartbreaking Hermione; Sarah Lamb and Steven McRae’s joyous pastoral duets; and an inspired design that finds a neat treatment of that most troublesome stage direction “exit, pursued by a bear”. Available until 15 May.
Performance Live
The Way Out, a single-take, 40-minute variety film, invites viewers to follow Omid Djalili through the mysterious, majestic and mundane corners of the phoenix-like Battersea Arts Centre. There are performances en route from Lucy McCormick, Le Gateau Chocolat and the hula-hooping Amazà from The Cocoa Butter Club. The film is part of the BBC’s Performance Live strand on iPlayer which includes Clowns by Hofesh Shechter; Winged Bull in the Elephant Case, in which dancers take over the National Gallery; Alexander Zeldin’s devastating Love, about Christmas in temporary accommodation; a poetry night hosted by Kate Tempest; Eggs Collective’s raucous Get a Round; and I Told My Mum I Was Going on an RE Trip, based on real stories about abortion. Full lineup for Performance Live. Read our review of The Way Out.
Zara
Parenting and prejudice are explored in Mind the Gap’s ambitious outdoor production at Geraldine Mary Harmsworth Park by the Imperial War Museum in London. Framed as a breaking news report, the show explores the stigma people with learning disabilities face when they have children. There’s a cast of more than 100 and a puppet baby that’s bigger than a double-decker bus. Available on YouTube until 11 May.
Deafinitely Theatre
The groundbreaking company Deafinitely Theatre have launched a season of their work, performed in British Sign Language and spoken English. In May, you can see the company’s production of George Brant’s Grounded from 2015, featuring signer Nadia Nadarajah playing a drone pilot and Charmaine Wombwell as the voice of the pilot. A version of Mike Bartlett’s Contractions, about workplace fear, is available in June. On YouTube.
The Phantom of the Opera
Obsession! Haunting ballads! A shattered chandelier! And musical theatre’s most famous mask … Enjoy one of the world’s most successful shows, presented at the Royal Albert Hall in 2011, with Ramin Karimloo as the Phantom and Sierra Boggess as Christine, to celebrate its 25th anniversary. The film is available to rent on Amazon. It was also show as part of The Shows Must Go On, a series offering a different Andrew Lloyd Webber musical each week.
Told By An Idiot
The questing British theatre have, as they put it, been “creating the unexpected” since they launched in 1993. As their current tour of The Strange Tale of Charlie Chaplin and Stan Laurel has been cut short, they are sharing shows from their vast archive which is stuffed with gems. Each show is available for a week only – keep an eye on their site to see what’s currently on offer.
Wise Children
Former Kneehigh and Shakespeare’s Globe artistic director Emma Rice chose an adaptation of Angela Carter’s carnivalesque final novel Wise Children as her first production for her new theatre company, which shares the same name as the book. Filmed at York Theatre Royal, it’s available to stream on BBC iPlayer for three months as part of the Culture in Quarantine programme. Expect twins, cartwheels, puppets and a palpable passion for theatre itself. Read the full review.
This is Not My Hat
The Little Angel theatre is streaming charming versions of three Jon Klassen picturebooks, directed and performed by Ian Nicholson, with characterful puppets made by Sam Wilde. I Want My Hat Back found an otherwise polite bear taking revenge on a bad bunny who has pinched his pointy red hat – it’s eight and a half minutes of pure joy. The sequel, also staged on top of a wooden dresser and told with music by Jim Whitcher, is a kind of Grand Theft Aqua in which a tiddler has stolen a handsome green bowler from a much bigger fish who reclaims it while enjoying a snack. Just as mischievously macabre as the original book. Another sequel, We Found a Hat, will be online from 24 May.
What the Butler Saw
Joe Orton’s final farce, completed in the summer of 1967 just before the playwright’s death, is a subversive satire about an irrational world, set in a psychiatrist’s consulting room. Rufus Hound dons the white coat as the philandering Dr Prentice in Nikolai Foster’s 2017 production for Leicester Curve and Theatre Royal Bath. The cast includes Dakota Blue Richards and Jasper Britton. Curve’s productions of Memoirs of an Asian Football Casual and The Importance of Being Earnest are also online.
Little Red Riding Hood
The big bad wolf is soppy rather than scary in Northern Ballet’s sweet retelling of the fairytale. He wouldn’t dream of eating gran and ends up invited to a jolly tea party instead. A spring tour of the production has been cancelled but there is a version adapted for CBeebies online. An attractive introduction to ballet’s magic. Read the full review.
Gateshead international festival of theatre
The 10th edition of Gateshead’s festival of live art, interactive theatre and dance takes place entirely online this year, streamed from 1-3 May, and is themed around human connection and resilience. Tickets are on a pay-what-you-decide basis and the lineup includes work from Jonathan Burrows, Matteo Fargion, Wendy Houstoun and Bert & Nasi. One highlight is RadiOh Europa, a collection of strangers’ love songs recorded by Gemma Paintin and James Stenhouse on a trip through Europe.
Paul Gallico’s 1958 novel Mrs ’Arris Goes to Paris, about a charlady who covets a designer gown, became one of the most acclaimed British musicals in recent years. Written by Rachel Wagstaff, with music and lyrics by Richard Taylor, it was the swansong of Sheffield Crucible’s artistic director Daniel Evans in 2016 and remounted by him when he took over at Chichester Festival theatre. That 2018 staging is available free for 30 days from 9 April. You can also see CFT’s production of David Walliams’s The Midnight Gang, adapted by Byrony Lavery, with music and lyrics by Joe Stilgoe, for 30 days from 30 April.
Fleabag
You’ve watched both TV series. You’ve read the scripts. Maybe you’ve even seen the stage show more than once. But you’ll probably still be streaming Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s performance of her wildly successful monologue, recorded at Wyndham’s theatre in London where it sold out last summer. Fleabag is available to stream on Soho theatre’s On Demand site and on Amazon Prime. All proceeds will go towards charities including the National Emergencies Trust, NHS Charities Together and Acting for Others, which provides support to all theatre workers in times of need.
Some Enchanted Evening
Among this year’s many eagerly awaited but now cancelled musical productions was Hope Mill’s staging of Cinderella by Rodgers and Hammerstein. Instead, the Manchester theatre staged a virtual concert celebrating the great duo’s songs, not just from Cinderella but also Carousel, Oklahoma! and South Pacific. Georgie Buckland, who was due to play Cinders, starred along with Maria Friedman, Louise Dearman and Sophie-Louise Dann. It’s free to stream until 3 May but donations are welcome – artistic director Joseph Houston says the venue is in “a very vulnerable position” caused by Covid-19.
Shakespeare’s Globe
Itching to get back into that wooden O on the South Bank? Happily, the Globe Player has heaps of full productions to rent, including international productions from the 2012 Globe to Globe festival such as a Lithuanian Hamlet, a Turkish Antony and Cleopatra, a Japanese Coriolanus and an Armenian King John. There is also the candlelit Sam Wanamaker Playhouse’s opening production, The Duchess of Malfi, starring Gemma Arterton. On the Globe’s YouTube channel, a series of free streams, each available for a fortnight, continues with A Midsummer Night’s Dream (2013), The Two Noble Kinsmen (2018), The Winter’s Tale (2018) and The Merry Wives of Windsor (2019).
Mushy: Lyrically Speaking
Musharaf Asghar became a reality TV star in 2013 when the schoolboy appeared on Educating Yorkshire, which documented how a teacher helped him with his lifelong speech impediment. Asghar’s tale is now the subject of a new British musical, co-produced by Rifco theatre company and Watford Palace theatre and staged last year. It’s online and free to view for the entire isolation period. Read the full review.
Imitating the Dog
The groundbreaking theatre company Imitating the Dog were midway through touring Night of the Living Dead – Remix when theatres shut down. Now, they are streaming this ambitious show in which a cast of actors remake George Romero’s classic horror film shot by shot in real time. The company have also opened up their archive to stream a selection of creations from the last 20 years. Works will be released every fortnight and are available to watch on a pay-what-you-like basis.
Breach Theatre
This year’s Edinburgh festival has been cancelled, but you can catch up on the fringe hits of the smart, questing young company, Breach Theatre. Their breakthrough 2015 show, The Beanfield (on Vimeo), revisits the clash between police and new age travellers near Stonehenge in what was dubbed the “battle of the beanfield”. Breach’s widely acclaimed 2018 piece It’s True, It’s True, It’s True had been due to run at London’s Barbican this month but is now online instead from the Space. It’s a compelling three-hander evoking the 1612 trial of Agostino Tassi, accused of rape by baroque painter Artemisia Gentileschi.
The Beast Will Rise
Philip Ridley’s new play The Beast of Blue Yonder was due to open at the Southwark Playhouse in London in April. It has now been postponed but a series of new monologues by Ridley responding to the current crisis will be performed online by members of the cast. The first, Gator, stars Rachel Bright. Further online world premieres from Ridley will follow each week. Read the full review.
Belarus Free Theatre
The internet has been vital to the success of Belarus Free Theatre, one of Europe’s most essential theatre companies, which is forced to operate underground in its restrictive home country after the government banned it on political grounds. They have long rehearsed and created new productions over Skype. Now, the company – which turns 15 this year – is streaming 24 of its shows throughout May and June. English subtitles are available for those productions in Russian and Belarusian and each show will be available online for 24 hours. A cast of actors including Samuel West and Stephen Fry will also be reading excerpts from their favourite fairytales in BFT’s new online series.
Now I’m Fine
What better time is there to watch a “grand-scale experimental pop opera about keeping it together”? Ahamefule J Oluo’s innovative show, staged at Seattle’s Moore theatre in 2014, mixes standup-style routines with a mesmerising musical accompaniment and explores his experience of a rare autoimmune disease. It is one of many films, including Americana Kamikaze, that are available to stream from On the Boards. Read the full review.
Five Encounters on a Site Called Craigslist
With the help of a carrot, a sponge, the Miracles and some game audience members, Sam is going to tell you about five hook-ups he had through the casual encounters section of online classified-ads board Craigslist. Filmed at the Push festival in Home, Manchester, YESYESNONO’s production is an open, affecting and troubling look at searching for intimacy and connection. This hour will leave you reencountering your own life.
I, Cinna
The outbreak of homeschooling caused by the coronavirus has found many of us playing the role of teacher while still in our dressing gowns. And here’s one unexpected tutor who really commands your attention: Jude Owusu, clad in a dirty bathrobe, with a pen behind his ear and a notepad dangling around his neck. Owusu is Cinna, the poet from Julius Caesar, in this spellbinding film of Tim Crouch’s monologue, part of his series magnifying the experiences of minor characters from Shakespeare. Read the full review.
Boys Don’t
The Cure’s Robert Smith tried to laugh about it, cover it all up with lies, because – all together now – boys don’t cry. A powerful piece of rhyme-packed storytelling for the over-eights, Boys Don’t is delivered by four compelling performers and based on real-life experiences of the expectations placed on “little men” throughout the generations before they even get to the playground. Presented by Half Moon theatre, it’s a Papertale production in association with Apples and Snakes, staged at Brighton festival in 2018.
Funny Girl
Showtunes don’t get much more defiant or rousing than Don’t Rain on My Parade. Sheridan Smith wards off the clouds with a gritty rendition as Fanny Bryce in this production of the classic musical at Manchester’s Palace theatre in 2017. It’s one of the many productions available from Digital Theatre, whose offerings also include The Crucible starring Richard Armitage at the Old Vic in London, and Maxine Peake’s Hamlet at the Royal Exchange in Manchester.
Fragments (Beckett by Brook)
Is there a more fitting playwright for our current moment of isolation, uncertainty and endurance than Beckett? In this production, filmed at the marvellously atmospheric Bouffes du Nord in Paris in 2015, Peter Brook directs five Beckett shorts with a cast of three (Jos Houben, Marcello Magni and Kathryn Hunter). The production comprises Rough for Theatre I, Rockaby, Neither, Come and Go and Act Without Words II. Feel the rising panic and despair in Rockaby as the solitary, wide-eyed Hunter recounts a descent through long, lonely days.
Palermo Palermo
Even by Pina Bausch’s standards it’s an arresting opening: a huge wall collapses on stage and across the rubble comes Julie Shanahan, in high heels and a floral frock. After desperately commanding hugs from two suitors, she takes a seat and is pelted with rotten tomatoes. And so begins an epic patchwork of masochistic rituals, nightmares and games, blending the quotidian with the phenomenal, all inspired by the choreographer’s trip to Sicily. A rare chance to watch one of Bausch’s creations in full and for free online.
Smashed
At first sight they could be Pina Bausch’s dancers: a procession of performers wearing smart suits and enigmatic smiles, gliding across a stage filled with apples. Bausch’s company memorably balanced apples on their heads in Palermo Palermo, but as Smashed is created by those juggling supremos Gandini, the fruit is mostly in motion here. Their Bausch homage has the same childlike games, adult fantasy and bruised humour of the German choreographer’s work. Smashed is crisp, fresh and full of flavour. You may never look at an apple in the same way again …
Oscar Wilde season
All four productions in Classic Spring’s starry Oscar Wilde season in the West End can be watched on the online service Marquee TV, which is offering a 14-day free trial. Edward and Freddie Fox play father and son in An Ideal Husband; Eve Best is a memorable Mrs Arbuthnot in A Woman of No Importance; Kathy Burke directs Lady Windermere’s Fan; and Sophie Thompson is horrified by theatre’s most famous handbag in The Importance of Being Earnest.
Ghost Quartet
If you missed its run at Soho’s new Boulevard theatre, here’s a chance to savour Dave Malloy’s song cycle, filmed in New York in 2015. Alternately rousing and yearning, this is a gorgeous hymn to barflies, precious memories and the joys of being a ghost, told with a dash of Edgar Allan Poe and Thelonious Monk. It’s a glorious get-together of a show, as warming as the whiskey handed out to the audience – but you’ll have to pour your own.
Key Change
Open Clasp is a women’s theatre company aiming to “change the world, one play at a time”. Key Change, now available to stream online, is a fantastic introduction to their consistently impressive work with women who are on the margins of society; in this case, prisoners at HM Prison Low Newton, who devised the 2015 show with the theatre group over several months in order to break down stigma and enlighten audiences. It was filmed in partnership with The Space.
Crossings
Rural touring company Pentabus are releasing shows from their archive every Friday over a period of three months. Deirdre Kinahan’s play Crossings is, according to our critic Arifa Akbar, “an unexpected and touching drama about unlikely friendships, postwar homosexuality and the cost of war for women”. Read the full review.
Snow Mouse
You have to hunt to find full theatre productions for very young audiences online, so here’s a little treat. To mark World Day of Theatre for Children on 20 March the lovely Egg in Bath released their wintry 40-minute tale for the under-fours.
The actor Robert Myles has set up a live-streamed reading group for professional and amateur actors to perform Shakespeare’s complete plays in the order they’re believed to have been written. The Guardian’s very own Stephen Moss took on the role of the Duke of Burgundy in Henry VI Part I.
Peeping Tom trilogy
The brilliant Belgian dance-theatre company turned 20 this year and are best known in the UK for performing at London international mime festival and for their trilogy comprising Mother, Father and Child. Their brand of domestic terror, hope and ennui will strike a chord at this troubling time. Watch their first trilogy (Le Jardin, Le Salon and Le Sous Sol) online.
Showstopper! The Improvised Musical
After more than 1,000 productions, the Showstoppers improv crew are some of the quickest wits in the biz. So it’s no surprise that when they were faced with a West End closure they live-streamed a performance. Watch their custom-made, never-to-be-repeated impro musical on Facebook.
Since U Been Gone
Teddy Lamb was due to present a Trans Take Over at London’s Bunker theatre as part of its now suspended Power Share season. So they have uploaded a version of their musical fringe hit about losing loved ones and finding your own voice.
5 Soldiers
Rosie Kay’s extraordinary 5 Soldiers: The Body Is the Frontline was staged in army drill halls around the UK, but, since its livestream is still available online, you can watch it from the comfort of your own sofa. Performing in close quarters to a score that mixes punk and opera, Kay’s phenomenal company bring home the horror of combat and disarm audiences.
The Wind in the Willows
Julian Fellowes, George Stiles and Anthony Drewe teamed up to deliver a merry new version of Kenneth Grahame’s classic, staged at the London Palladium in 2017, with Rufus Hound wearing 50 shades of green as Mr Toad. It’s available to rent online, with the option to donate to help provide financial and emotional support to theatre workers.
Girls Like That
London’s Unicorn theatre has a world-class reputation for theatre for young audiences and its production of Evan Placey’s Girls Like That gripped the roomful of teenagers I watched it with in 2014. It’s online in full and offers a raw account of adolescent anxiety, slut-shaming and self-belief. In-your-face theatre that stays in your mind.
Le Patin Libre
Think dance on ice and you’d imagine sequins and staggering TV celebrities, but the Canadian troupe, Le Patin Libre, has taken the art form into a new dimension. In their double bill, Vertical Influences, the skaters turned the rink into a mesmerising stage slowly decorated by the patterns cut by their blades.
Woke
LIVR is a subscription service that enables you to catch up on theatre in 360-degree virtual reality. Pop your smartphone into the headset they send you and experience a range of shows including Apphia Campbell’s Fringe First award-winning show Woke, which interweaves the stories of Black Panther Assata Shakur and the 2014 Ferguson riots.
Apphia Campbell in Woke.Photograph: Murdo MacLeod/the Guardian
John Leguizamo’s Latin History for Morons
Self-isolation may mean that many of us will use living rooms to both teach children and watch theatre. An opportunity to combine the two can be found courtesy of the super-charismatic John Leguizamo – an inspirational tutor if ever there was – whose one-man Broadway show, Latin History for Morons, is on Netflix.
Cyprus Avenue
On Friday 27 March, to mark World Theatre Day, the Royal Court released an online version of David Ireland’s blistering play Cyprus Avenue, starring Stephen Rea as a Belfast loyalist who is convinced his baby granddaughter is Gerry Adams. The film mixes the drama shot at the Royal Court with location scenes of Belfast.
Timpson: The Musical
Two households, both alike in dignity … well, sort of. Our narrator, a talking portrait, lays our scene in Victorian London, and this musical comedy imagines the founding of the popular shoe-repair chain as a union between two companies, the Montashoes and the Keypulets. Watch Gigglemug Theatre’s show on YouTube.
My Left Nut
This is cheating as it’s a TV series, but BBC Three’s superb comedy drama is based on one of the most uproarious and affecting fringe theatre shows of recent years. It’s based on Michael Patrick’s own teenage experience of a medical condition that left his testicle “so big you could play it like a bongo”. Wince.
Rosas Danst Rosas
Love dance? Need to exercise at home? Then join the queen of Belgian avant-garde performance Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker as she talks you through how to perform her 1983 classic, Rosas Danst Rosas. All you need is a chair, a bit of legroom and enough space to swing your hair.
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