National Theatre Live: This House

This delightful pairing of one-act musicals, one classic and one modern, takes a comical and moving look at the mysteries of love. Act I, based on Schnitzler's The Little Comedy, is a delightful romp through the sexual ennui of turn-of-the-century Vienna, as two wealthy but bored socialites masquerade as impoverished bohemians seeking romance. Act II, based on the Jules Renard play Summer Share, explores modern affection and disaffection as two married couples share a summer house in the Hamptons. An Off-Off-Broadway sensation that successfully moved to Broadway, Romance/Romance is a charming and tuneful small-cast gem, here filmed live for television.

A young refugee travels from Russia to America in search of her lost father and falls in love with a gypsy horseman.

When an old adversary threatens Rome, the city calls once more on her hero and defender: Coriolanus. But he has enemies at home too. Famine threatens the city, the citizens’ hunger swells to an appetite for change, and on returning from the field Coriolanus must confront the march of realpolitik and the voice of an angry people.

Owerri, 1967, on the brink of the Biafran Civil War. Lolo, Nne Chukwu and Udo are grieving the loss of their father. Months before, two ruthless military coups plunged the country into chaos. Fuelled by foreign intervention, the conflict encroaches on their provincial village, and the sisters long to return to their former home in Lagos.

Loosely based on Giacomo Puccini’s opera La Bohème, Rent features book, music, and lyrics by Jonathan Larson. Manchester's Hope Mill Theatre brings a new live production of Rent directly to your home with this streamed performance filmed during the live run.

A flat in Ladbroke Grove, West London. 1952. When Hester Collyer is found by her neighbours in the aftermath of a failed suicide attempt, the story of her tempestuous affair with a former RAF pilot and the breakdown of her marriage to a High Court judge begins to emerge. With it comes a portrait of need, loneliness and long-repressed passion. Behind the fragile veneer of post-war civility burns a brutal sense of loss and longing.

Following four college friends in New York City: aspiring actor Willem, successful architect Malcolm, struggling artist JB, and prodigious lawyer Jude. As ambition, addiction, and pride threaten to pull the group apart, they always find themselves bound by their love for Jude and the mysteries of his past. But when those secrets come to light, they finally learn that to know Jude St Francis is to understand the limitless potential of love in the face of life.

Based on Michael Morpurgo's novel and adapted for the stage by Nick Stafford, War Horse takes audiences on an extraordinary journey from the fields of rural Devon to the trenches of First World War France.

National Theatre Live’s 2010 broadcast of Alan Bennett’s acclaimed play The Habit of Art, with Richard Griffiths, Alex Jennings and Frances de la Tour, returns to cinemas as part of the National Theatre's 50th anniversary celebrations. Benjamin Britten, sailing uncomfortably close to the wind with his new opera, Death in Venice, seeks advice from his former collaborator and friend, W H Auden. During this imagined meeting, their first for twenty-five years, they are observed and interrupted by, amongst others, their future biographer and a young man from the local bus station. Alan Bennett’s play is as much about the theatre as it is about poetry or music. It looks at the unsettling desires of two difficult men, and at the ethics of biography. It reflects on growing old, on creativity and inspiration, and on persisting when all passion’s spent: ultimately, on the habit of art.

Ali G unwittingly becomes a pawn in the evil Chancellor's plot to overthrow the Prime Minister of Great Britain. However, instead of bringing the Prime Minister down, Ali is embraced by the nation as the voice of youth and 'realness', making the Prime Minister and his government more popular than ever.

In 1950s America, protests for racial equality erupt in the face of voter suppression. On Broadway, Wiletta Mayer, a talented black actress, begins rehearsals for a new play about racism – written and directed by two white men. When Wiletta finds that her arguments to tell the truth of the story are dismissed, she decides to take action. First staged over 60 years ago, Trouble in Mind is widely considered the masterpiece of actress and playwright Alice Childress - a wry and radical satire of racism in theatre.