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Mickey Jo
Oh my God. Hey, it's me, Mickey Jo, a content creator and theatre critic here on social media. And today I would like to tell you all about National Theatre Live and how they changed the face of theatre in 100 broadcasts. So national Theatre Live was created by the London based National Theatre and last month they shared their 100th play on the big screen with audiences around the world. When I realized that this milestone was looming, I immediately knew that I wanted to venture back and Explore the last 15 years of the scheme and how it grew to what it is now. But what I didn't expect was that that history would also chart my own formative years as a theatregoer and a critic. Truthfully, I hadn't considered how influential and impactful National Theatre Live was for me, and how it in many ways led to me doing just what I'm doing right now. So this isn't just the story of how National Theatre Live changed the theatre industry. It's also the story of how it changed my life. Now, as the story goes, it was the National Theatre's then finance director, Lisa Berger, who came up with the idea inspired by a similar concept, the live broadcast of the Metropolitan Opera from New York and as a publicly funded venue, tied in very neatly with the National Theatre's ethos, providing increased access to prestigious theatre nationwide at a lower price point. And so the very first broadcast took place on 25 June 2009. A production of Racine's Phaedra, starring Dame Helen Mirren in the titular role. NTLive's first head of broadcast, David Sable, credits Dame Helen Mirren and her performance as being a significant component of the scheme's successful launch. Now, when I first discovered the scheme a few years later, I had assumed that at that point it was still only available in a few locations, largely because there was only one cinema local to me showing it. But in reality, even then, the play was shown in 270 cinemas in 19 different countries. In fact, the very first email that the team received by way of feedback was from a viewer in Reykjavik, Iceland. Meanwhile, an audience of invited guests were watching next door to the National Theatre at the bfi, including the cast of a simultaneous production. All's well that ends well. Who would be up next? I can't imagine how thrilling and nerve wracking it must have been for them, watching that production on screen and considering that they would would soon be performing their own show to so many more people than they could physically perceive. In the years that would follow, there would be considerable variety the broadcasts, reflecting the diversity of the shows programmed at the National Theatre's various spaces, shifting from classical Shakespeare to the more contemporary. The third broadcast was Nation, an adaptation by Mark Ravenhill of the Terry Pratchett novel. This, being geared specifically towards family audiences, was the first show to be broadcast as a live matinee. Next was another new play and one of the many collaborations between the venue's then artistic director, Nicholas Heitner, the playwright Alan Bennett. This was the habit of art. Now all artistic directors get the chance to offer their own perspective in programming for a theatre. And Heitner's, of which Alan Bennett was an ever present element, had previously been exclusively available to London attendees, now beamed nationwide and beyond, he found himself curating the work of the National Theatre for a truly national audience. Now, the sixth broadcast marked a major milestone for the series, taking place almost a year after that first screening. It was the first time that a piece was shown from a ve outside the National Theatre, outside London, even the Theatre Royal in Portsmouth. In fact, this show, a disappearing number, wasn't produced by the National Theatre at all, but by the renowned theatre company Complicite, with whom the national are imminently collaborating again, by the way, on their show Mnemonic. But a year into the scheme by this point, this allowed the NTlive team to test the confines of the concept, broadcasting from a new location and opening the door to a wider body of work. Back at home, NT Live would show more Shakespeare with Hamlet and King Lear, as well as Fela, the jukebox musical based on the music and lyrics of the late Nigerian singer Fela Kuti. And then, in March 2011, came Frankenstein. For the very first time, National Theatre Live would broadcast two separate performances for one very good reason. In this production of Mary Shelley's Gothic horror from Academy Award winning director Danny Boyle, the actors Benedict Cumberbatch and Jonny Lee Miller would alternate the roles of scientist Victor Frankenstein and his creature. This same creative team would go on to create the opening ceremony of the 2012 Olympic Games in London. Very big deal. And much of that visual intensity and mechanism could absolutely be seen in the early moments of this production of Frankenstein. And I can tell you this with certainty, because this was the first National Theatre live broadcast I ever saw, and I saw Benedict as the creature and Johnny as Victor. Now, I had sought this out specifically because at that point, as luck would have it, I had just started collaborating with two sixth form friends on an original musical adaptation of Frankenstein that would later be performed as our school musical, Ousting the planned Sweeney Todd, for which I now feel slight, embarrassed. But this theatricalization of the text would prove hugely valuable for us and was often on our minds as we pieced together songs and scenes between A levels. It was a key piece of research that, short of a train ticket to London, was only available to us because of the broadcast. But after seeing this, I was hooked. And with perfect timing, because National Theatre Live was already on a roll. In almost complete tonal opposites came Anton Chekhov's the Cherry Orchard, starring Zoe Wanamaker and Richard Bean's One Man, Two Governors. This was a smash hit comedy play that updated the antics of class commedia dell'arte to 1960s Brighton and starred James Corden as Francis Henschel, an out of work skiffle player who inadvertently finds himself in the employment of two men simultaneously. One man, two governors. The show would go on to transfer to the Adelphi and then to the Theatre Royal Haymarket in the West End, where I went to see it. Having seen the broadcast, it would also tour the UK multiple times and head stateside for a Broadway run at the Music Box Theatre in New York. Now, years before the Bear became a huge TV hit, the Kitchen followed the high paced workplace environment of a profess London kitchen, with the actors in the show having trained in knife skills under the renowned chef Jeremy Lee. And it's just as well they did, because if you thought the precision of their performance would be scrutinized from the front stalls, imagine watching it in glorious high definition on an enormous cinema screen. Suddenly the need for accuracy and verisimilitude in these productions became even more pressing. Next Mr. Heitner directed John Hodges collaborators in the Dorfman space at the National Theatre, starring Alex Jennings as a playwright living in Stalinist Moscow and Simon Russell Beale as Stalin. He also helmed Nicholas Wright's Travelling Light in the Lyttelton Theatre. There are three different theatrical spaces within the National Theatre, while Dominic Cook directed NTLive's next Shakespeare, the Comedy of Errors. Now, if these were some of the most prominent directors of that time, the Next was a creative on the rise, a wunderkind of London theatre by the name of Jamie Lloyd. Fast forward to today and he is accepting the Olivier Award for Best Director for his bold cinematic take on Sunset Boulevard. But back in March 2012, NTLive was showing his production of the 18th century comedy she Stoops to Conquer. Now another noteworthy broadcast was the 18th, the curious incident of the Dog in the Night Time. This offered audiences the chance to witness Simon Stephen's adaptation of the Mark Haddon novel before it would go on to play multiple West End venues, tour the UK and again transfer to Broadway. It starred Luke Treadaway as Christopher Boone, who won an Olivier Award for his performance and shared his dressing room with the real life rat who played Toby. Now, what's interesting about this one, other than the dawn of a huge production for the National Theatre, is that the show, as it was broadcast, was performed in the round with audiences sat around multiple sides of the stage. But subsequently, when it transferred to the West End's Apollo Theatre, it would be restaged for a more traditional proscenium staging, which is how the majority of its audiences will now have seen it. Meanwhile, more than a decade later, Luke Treadaway is back in the West End, starring as the MC in Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club, albeit sharing his dressing room with fewer rats. I mean, I can only assume. Next came another new play, the Last of the Housemans, written by Simon Beresford and featuring the stage debut of a young graduate actor named Taron Egerton. He's best known now, of course, for appearing in films such as Kingsman and Rocketman, but prior to all of that, he was a budding thespian and a winner of the Stephen Sondheim Society Student Performer of the Year competition. Lofty stars would continue to tread the boards of the National Theatre, with Simon Russell Beale taking on a lesser produced Shakespeare in Timon of Athens and screen star John Lithgow offering a comedic performance in a Victorian farce called the Magistrate. A brilliant supporting performance, as I recall, came from Joshua Maguire as a young man whose mother was lying to him about his age, leaving him pubescent and confused. But more on him later. After that was another Nicholas Heitner and Alan Bennett collaboration, People notably, also a reunion with the History Boys and the habit of art star Francis de la Tour. And then in May of 2013, this house. Now this was written by James Graham, who has just this month won the Olivier Award for his celebrated new play, Dear England. And when I said of Dear England that James Graham had a knack for theatricalising intriguing historical subject matter, it was the play this House that I was comparing that to, as he utilised a 1970s parliamentary deadlock to summarise the frustrations of British politics. By the time the 24th broadcast had taken place, National Theatre Live had grown considerably. Not only were the showings now available in multiple cinemas near me, including the since demolished Odeon Cinema rip, which is where I would see this one, but the crew would also find themselves moving to another new location. This was the audience in June 2013, the First West End show to be broadcast as part of the scheme and a reunion with its first star, Dame Helen Mirren, this time playing Queen Elizabeth II in a series of factually imagined conversations with several decades of prime ministers. I can vividly remember her heartfelt exchanges with Richard McCabe's Harold Wilson and the biting altercation with Margaret Thatcher, portrayed by the late great Hayden Gwynne. I remember so clearly the way that she delivered the line unprecedentedly close, and remember thinking this was some of the finest acting I had ever seen. But it wasn't just me. The draw of a West End show available on a screen near you proved to be tremendous, with record numbers watching nearly 80,000 in the UK and 30,000 in North America. Perhaps it was also an early indication of the allure of the subject matter, the concept of a closer glimpse inside Buckingham Palace. After all, the play's writer, Peter Morgan, would go on to develop the concept further, with the audience, eventually becoming the Netflix series the Crown. A month later, another broadcast, this time even further from the national, as our cinema screens brought us Macbeth, an electrifying production staged in a deconsecrated church as part of the Manchester International Festival. Sir Kenneth Branagh, who recently played King Lear in the West End, was at that time giving his first Shakespearean performance in a decade, joined by a haunting Alex Kingston as Lady Macbeth. If I remember rightly, I headed to the beach afterwards to meet friends who had been enjoying a Saturday night by the pier. I, meanwhile, had a date with Shakespeare, because of course I did. That's a little glimpse into my teenage life for you. Shakespeare would actually feature in many of the next broadcasts, including a modern day set production of Othello, starring Adrian Lester and Rory Kinnear, as well as the then rising star Jonathan Bailey as Cassio. There was also the turbulent political tragedy Coriolanus from the Donmar Warehouse, starring Tom Hiddleston and Olivier Award winner Mark Gatiss, and what I remember as an especially sorrowful King Lear. That's the second King Lear on National Theatre Live, if you're keeping count. Adrian Scarborough made for a particularly memorable fool, who in this production was beaten to death for his trouble. That doesn't normally happen in King Lear, My friend had to tell me as I was thinking, gosh, what a violent play. And it is, but not always for the fool. In between those, however, came Warhorse, screened from its then home at the Gillian Lynn Theatre in the West End, adapted from the beloved Michael Morpurgo novel by Nick Stafford. This is one of the National Theatre's most ongoingly successful productions and it's set to tour the UK again in 2024. Of course, a huge part of its wondrous storytelling is the astonishing life sized anim by South Africa's Handspring Puppet Company, including the majestic Joey the Horse, recently seen celebrating 60 years of the National Theatre on stage at the Olivier Awards. Fun fact. When I was at the University of Surrey, they were opening a brand new vet school and the opening was visited by Queen Elizabeth II and Joey from War Horse. And I will let you decide who I was more excited about. For what it's worth, I also have an enormous amount of love for the goose. Following that, Alan Aykborn's A Small Family Business returned to the National Theatre 27 years after it first debuted at the venue, when it won the Evening Standard award for Best New play. If you're wondering, the insights that programming like this provided in terms of theatrical history is one of the many ways in which I learned a lot about theatre that had come before I was born. Another brilliant aspect of NTLive, because they also weren't just broadcasting the performances. There was a pre show chat element, there was an interval chat element and you got provided with so much context, it's no wonder I ended up talking about theatre for hours on end here in front of a camera. Now, I don't know if it represented any significant milestone for National Theatre Live, but I absolutely have to tell you about Skylight, because this was not only one of my favourite theatrical broadcasts, but also one of the most astonishing pieces of theatre I've ever seen. This is a David Hare play. In a revival which was directed by Stephen Daldry, Carey Mulligan and Bill Nighy played reuniting lovers, tiptoeing around old wounds and exchanging perspectives from different end of a political spectrum. As you might imagine, they were both fantastic in their own quintessential ways. Naive with his trademark offbeat charm and Mulligan with a sort of simmering fury. And that wasn't the only thing that was simmering, because between denunciations of Conservative Party policy, she cooked pasta live on stage at every performance. But if Carey Mulligan's leading performance seemed like a tough act to follow, the next two broadcasts had actresses at the ready, with the late and brilliant Helen McCrory starring in the title role in Madea, and Gillian Anderson taking on the tragic heroine of Tennessee Williams, Streetcar Named Desire, Blanche dubois. This was at the Young Vic Theatre and she was joined by Ben Foster and Vanessa Kirby in a production that conveyed her swirling mental state with a set that was literally in constant revolution. How they managed to find an effective way to film this live boggles my entire mind. These people are very good at what they do. The 34th broadcast brought an exciting new the first and thus far the only National Theatre Live filmed overseas. Direct from Broadway's Longacre Theatre in New York. Of Mice and Men starred James Franco and Chris O'Dowd as John Steinbeck's protagonists George and Lenny. Names which for many of us will be inextricably linked to the English GCSE syllabus. Tony Award winning producer David Binder shared. I can't think of a greater honour that could be bestowed on this production of Steinbeck's Masterwork than to have an opportunity for millions of theatre lovers around the world to see our production under the auspices of National Theatre Live. Then for something completely different as physical theatre company DV8, that's spelled DV8 presented John. And after that, Polly Findlay directed Treasure Island. Now, I actually saw that production in person with some friends while I was at university. Two things I remember Lizzie Klachen's extraordinary transforming set design that metamorphosized from a pirate ship to a complex cave system before our eyes and plotting to sneak into Arthur Darvill's St Patrick's Day party by telling the stage door that the three of us collectively were the actress Karen Gillan. Spoiler alert. Didn't work. Then there was behind the Beautiful Forevers, notable perhaps because it was directed by Rufus Norris. By this time he'd been announced to take over from Nicholas Heitner as the next artistic director of the National Theatre, perhaps the most prestigious ad job in the country. It wasn't actually until this happened within the world of National Theatre Live broadcasts that I particularly paid attention to appointments such as these and the movements of creatives between different organizations. So, as well as a discerning theatre goer, I guess ntlive was also training me to become a pundit. But for me, the most powerful production of 2015 was was Ivo Van Hove's A View from the Bridge, starring Mark Strong and Nicola Walker. This Arthur Miller revival at the Young Vic was performed with almost animalistic intensity and without demonstrable directorial flair. It had me gripped for what I believe was a notably long amount of time without an interval. It was then I learned that truly great direction is much more than just what you can see of it. As the year continued, there was the hard Problem, a new Tom Stoppard play which asked scientific and philosophical questions in tandem. I can still hear Olivia Vinall, who I'd first seen in Othello years before, saying the title of the play. Ralph Fiennes starred in man and the experimental epic by George Bernard Shaw, in which a car was driven on stage back to the the Musical Eat yout Heart out, and the following month Rufus Norris directed his first production in post as artistic director, Everyman, starring chiwetel Ejiofor. The 42nd broadcast was the Beaux Stratagem, and I again saw this in person because by that point I had learned that Samuel Barnett and Jeffrey Straightfield being in the Castle was a good enough reason to buy tickets. I may have even written a review of this show as a baby theatre blogger trying to figure out how to do that and do it well. Hopefully it's hidden on some corner of the Internet because nobody needs to read that afterwards. National Theatre Live's second Hamlet, this time from the Barbican Theatre, starring Benedict Cumberbatch and one of several occasions when NTLive was hugely useful to the many disappointed fans who hadn't been able to get tickets. A fun footnote here is that the Barbican, as well as a theatre space, has its own cinema to which the play was broadcast, and if that isn't novel enough, the cast ran across to surprise that cinema audience by taking a second curtain call there after the performance. Imagine, if you will, going to see something at the cinema and then the cast appear in front of you, both exciting and unnerving, I think. Following Hamlet was Jane Eyre, an acclaimed reimagining of Charlotte Bronte's orphaned heroine by director Sally Cookson that featured a striking soundtrack and Les Liaisons Dangereuse at the Donmar Warehouse, with a starry cast including Una Stubbs, Dominic West, Janet McTeer and more. Directed by Josie Rourke. I was back at the National Theatre in person again to see the next broadcast, as yous like it, starring Rosalie Craig, who also briefly played a sheep, and Patsy Farren, who I'd seen in Treasure Island. And once again, just like that production featured an incredible Lizzie Klachen set design that underwent another total transformation, which was completely chaotic and mind blowing. By this point in my life I was definitely coming to understand how powerful creative elements such as this could be. Next, a deeply funny new play from Martin McDonagh, Hangmen, which was captured at the Wyndham's Theatre in the West End and starred David Morrissey and Andy Nyman as well as a young Johnny Flynn, seen more recently in the Motive and the queue afterwards, Terrence Ratigan's the Deep Blue Sea, with Helen McCrory returning to the National Theatre stage to play one of the greatest female roles in contemporary drama. A few weeks after celebrating my 21st birthday, I headed back to the cinema for the broadcast of the Threepani Opera, a piece I knew very little about beyond it being a collaboration between Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill. I was absolutely unprepared for such a rich revival in every creative aspect. And as cabaret star Legato Chocolat began to sing Mack the Knife, I found myself learning about the value of unexpectedly brilliant casting. Another broadcast from the West End would capture the iconic pairing of Sirian McKellen and Patrick Stewart in no Man's Land by Harold Pinter. While back at the national an equally iconic pair of characters were growing tense as musical contemporaries in Peter Schaeffer's Amadeus. Chloe Lamford's costume design, particularly for Mozart, was just gorgeous. I'm pretty sure I desperately wanted his shoes. This story about feuding men would be followed by strong female performances, with Joe Rourke directing Gemma Arterton in St. Joan at the Donmar Warehouse and Eva Van Hove directing Ruth Wilson in a new version of Ibsen's Hedda Gabler by Patrick Marber. And if you thought a production of Twelfth Night would buck this trend, you would be mistaken as Tamsin. Grieg was cast as a gender swapped Malvolia in a move that exposed the cruelty of the character's humiliation. A very powerful creative choice then, if not Shakespeare, Shakespeare adjacent as we travel to the Old Vic for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, a celebratory 50th anniversary remounting of Stoppard's Hamlet. Fanfiction, but brilliant highbrow fanfiction. But who could star alongside Daniel Radcliffe to complete the perfect leading pair? The answer was found in another pint sized powerhouse, the brilliant Joshua Maguire, who I'd first seen in the Magistrate years before. Summer 2017 would see a variety of productions screened by NTLive, including a return for Ivo Van Hove, this time directing Obsession at the Barbican Theatre, one of my all time favourite plays, who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Starring Imelda Staunton and Conleth Hill, Sally Cookson's wonderfully inventive take on Peter Pan at the national and an urgent hypnotic production of the infamous biblical tale of Salome from internationally acclaimed director Yael Farber. But by 2017 I was seeing fewer National Theatre live broadcasts for one specific was it because I'd made the decision to prioritise work over seeing so much theatre? Don't be ridiculous. In fact, I'd arrived at the point in my theatre going journey where I was lucky enough to be able to see many of these shows in person and I was thrilled to get to see both parts of Angels in America at the Lyttelton Theatre. Now, this was before Matthew Lopez's the Inheritance had arrived in London and my first experience of seeing a two part play each with three acts. That's six acts of theatre in one day, if anyone's counting. What I remember distinctly about seeing this in the theatre was the energy in the room. That audience was so invigorated and energised after the first act, talking about the compelling theatre we'd just witness witnessed by the end of the fifth act later that same day, people were stretching in the aisles and reassuring each other that we were going to make it through this. Sometimes theatre is a marathon, people, and not a sprint. Now, I meant to catch Yerma in the theatre, but I didn't. And I heard only fantastic things about Billie Piper's performance and she was the only female actor to win all six of the best actress awards in UK theatre for that performance. I don't know if that's still true, but it was at the time in any case that thank God, ntlive filmed it for posterity. I did catch Follies in what I think was as close to a perfect production of the show as there's been in years. Tracy Bennett stopped the show with I'm Still Here, Janie Dee ascended to full gay icon status as Phyllis and Imelda Staunton was harrowing once more as Sally Durant Plummer. I was recently at a launch event for the upcoming revival of hello Dolly and director Dominic Cook revealed that it was during this run of Follies that he suggested Imelda Staunton should do Dolly next and the two of them are now bringing it to the Palladium together. We've reached broadcast number 64 now in December 2017 and young marks the first showing from the then newly opened Bridge Theatre under previous National Theatre Artistic director Nicholas Heitner, A venue which you may now know as the home of the immersive, multi award winning revival of Guys and Dolls. In fact, Guys and Dolls was not the first immersive production at the Bridge, as audiences learned with Julius Caesar starring Ben Whishaw, which was shown in March 2018, but not before Cat and Hot Tin Roof. Which was broadcast from the West End. Tennessee Williams trademark Southern sexual tension was delivered by a starry cast, including Sienna Miller and Jack O'Connell and Col Meaney. Then back at the National Theatre, where artistic director Rufus Norris was staging Macbeth, the second Macbeth for NT Live, starring Rory Kinnear, who had not long before starred in Young Mark. Afterwards, a new version of August Strindberg's Miss Julie, simply titled Julie, starring Vanessa Kirby. And then, if you can believe it, NT Live's third King Lear, since its inception just under a decade previously. This time, however, Lear was portrayed by one of the nation's most beloved and revered actors, the great titan of Shakespearean performance, Surian McKellen, now a major motion picture starring Jennifer Saunders. Alleluia was the next play to be broadcast from the Bridge, offering an eyebrow raising look at an underfunded National Health Service. This marked another collaboration between the playwright Alan Bennett and director Nicholas Heitner, this time in his new Theatre at the Bridge. All the way from Nottingham Playhouse came the Madness of King George iii, starring Olivier Award winner Mark Gatiss as King George iii, whose work you may know from Hamilton. Then for Christmas 2018, the National Theatre gave us the gift of Ralph Fiennes, Sophie Oconido and a live snake in Antony and Cleopatra. Simon Russell Beale returned once more to the screens of National Theatre Live after his timing of Athens and King Lear to play Richard ii second in a production captured at London's intimate Almeida Theatre. At the national itself. Meanwhile, a new David Hare play, I'm Not Running, followed a woman deciding whether or not to run for Labour Party leadership. Another piece from director Ivo Van Hove next with a familiar star as Gillian Anderson, returned to the screens of National Theatre Live alongside Lily James in All About Eve. Now, screens is the operative word here, because this production, not unlike the currently running opening night, used on stage cameras to add a voyeuristic quality to a backstage theatrical, dramatic drama. But they weren't the only screen stars gracing the London stage. Over at the Old Vic, where the next broadcast would take place, Bill Pullman and Sally Field were leading a revival of Arthur Miller's All My Sons alongside Jenna Louise Coleman and Colin Morgan. Now, each of the next two productions are towering examples of the kind of theatrical work the National Theatre does sublimely well, dare I say it, better than anyone else in the world. In June 2019, artistic director Rufus Norris brought Small island to the stage, which was screened as part of National Theatre Live's 10th birthday celebrations. The award winning book by Andrea Levy, adapted by Helen Edmondson used a company of 40 actors to tell three interwoven stories that charted the tangled history of the post war Windrush generation. Gosh, this was an utterly inspiring piece of theatre, filled to the absolute brim with heartbreaking humanity. Epic being the word of the day, the Lehman trilogy came next, a truly vast undertaking that told audiences the increasingly friendly, frenzied story of the Lehman Brothers, whose impact on global capitalism became staggeringly apparent as Sam Mendes masterful staging spiralled out of control. In each iteration, the play has featured a trio of powerhouse actors, first seen here with Simon Russell Beale, Adam Godley and Ben Miles. Of course, cherished as the broadcasts had become by those watching worldwide, rarely had one particular show been so hotly anticipated as when National Theatre Live screened a live capture of Fleabag. What you have to understand is that at this point, Phoebe Waller Bridge's shockingly candid solo show had already had huge success as a television series. And by the time she was reprising her performance of the original stage version, she'd become an enormous star. It is little surprise that this would become the most watched NT live of all time. And then, almost as if spurred on by Phoebe Waller Bridge's huge success, London theatre seemed to be going from strength to strength. Strength and NTLive were there to document it. The Bridge had created another immersive Shakespeare, turning A Midsummer Night's Dream into a euphoric festival rave, complete with a little bit of Beyonce. Conveying an immersive experience through screens was presumably the next challenge for the NT Live team, who by this point were seasoned pros in capturing the traditional theatrical atmosphere. You need only watch the recording, however, to see what a great job they did. Lindsey Duncan starred in Hansard, a witty and devastating political play from Simon Wood woods, while the ever popular Andrew Scott was at the Old Vic in Noel Coward's present laughter delighting audiences. And then there was Cyrano. Now, in the years since ntlive last broadcast his work, Jamie Lloyd had delved further into the stark, minimalistic style with which he is now largely associated. And James McAvoy not using any facial prosthetics to play Cyrano de Bergerac, who, per the text, has an enormous nose, spoke spellbinding poetry into a handheld microphone in dulcet yet masculine tones. Stirring. Stirring is the word. Now, if I take a moment before telling you about the next production, it's because that last one was broadcast in February of 2020. And the world was about to change in March 2020, when lockdown forced public spaces to close Indefinitely. Most theatres worldwide were faced with no other option but to say goodbye to their audiences. It didn't take the National Theatre long, however, to find a way to bring theatre to people on a global scale, as a handful of their archived National Theatre live broadcasts were made available to watch for Free Weekly on YouTube, which you may not have known about at the time, but this was a massive deal. There we all were with no access to theatre really, and the National Theatre were giving us these prestigious, brilliant, beautiful captures weekly and for free. These 16 productions included some of their biggest early hits like One Man, Two Governors and Frankenstein. It's How I Watched this House and Twelfth Night and Anthony and Cleopatra that was so much. By the end, this At Home series had attained 15 million total views, reaching 9 million households from 173 countries. Virtually the National Theatre was performing to enough audience members to hypothetically fill their largest auditorium 13,000 times over, which would in real life require a run of 35 years of performances. That is how many people really needed this. And it likely won't surprise you to find out who one of those viewers was. In February of 2020, I was an eager theatre blogger, writing reviews of vault festival shows and off West End plays mostly, as well as creating social media content for a musical that had just arrived from Broadway. Unbelievably, at this point it hadn't particularly occurred to me to combine these two ideas and create review style content on YouTube. And it still wouldn't for a while. But when the Pandemic brought in person, theatre going and by extension the world of theatre criticism to an almost complete standstill, I saw this as an opportunity to hone my craft, find a voice and get as much practice as possible, writing reviews of the National Theatre at home screenings and focusing on the details that either made each show work or worked to its detriment. People will often ask me now what the best way is to get started as a critic, and the response I usually give is to just get practice to hone your craft. And this was such a brilliant opportunity for me because I had this amazing crystal clear version of these shows that I could really study and analyze. Finally, on 27 January 2022, a little under two years since the last broadcast, National Theatre Live was back in cinemas, bringing brand new theatre to a steadily resurfacing world. Planned pre Pandemic and filmed with a new cast, upon its return to the Wyndham's Theatre, this was the Olivier and Tony Award winning best play, Leopoldstadt. Wasting little time, ntlive headed Next to the bridge once more to show the Book of Dust, a story by Philip Pullman set 12 years before the epic and well loved loved his Dark Materials trilogy. As the summer of 2022 loomed, even more stars would be seen on National Theatre live broadcast with Kit Harington charging once more onto the breach as Henry V, Ralph Fiennes portraying former Secretary of State of New York, Robert Moses in Straight Line Crazy and Jodie Comer igniting the London stage in the multi award winning Prima Facie. The shortening days saw screenings of Much Ado About Nothing in a stylish early 20th century Mediterranean setting and Jack ups absolute flies again. A new comedy of manners Based on the 18th century play the Rivals, co created by Richard Bean who wrote One Man, Two Governors and Oliver Criss who had starred in it. Finally, the last broadcast of 2022 was another postponed production directed by the man who provided NTLive's last pre Covid offering, Jamie Lloyd, this time stripping back Chekhov's the Seagull in a new adaptation by Anya Rice and starring Game of Thrones alumni Amelia Clarke and Indira Varma. Lloyd stationed his actors on plastic chairs in a chipboard walled set as if in a rehearsal space. The result was a laser sharp focus on the text that to my mind very much paid off. Back on the south bank meanwhile, Clint Dyer directed Giles Torreira in Othello. But first Lindsay Turner's production of the Crucible. This would go on to transfer at the Gielgud Theatre where I saw it, but was broadcast during its run in the Nationals Olivier Auditorium and gained notoriety on social media for its striking rain curtain. In fact, the first row of the audience were offered ponchos. But as we move towards 2024, the milestones would keep coming. By this time screening productions from West End theatres would become just as commoners. From the National's own Auditoria from the Wyndham's Theatre, the award winning stage adaptation of Life of PI would be the first NT live shot in 4K, a glorious high definition worthy of the show's beautiful staging that incorporated stunning puppetry by Finn Caldwell as well as jaw dropping video design from Andre Goulding, among other creative forces. Elsewhere in the West End there was Goode, starring David Tennant as the German professor John Holder at the Harold Pinter Theatre. And Best of Enemies which saw Zachary Quinto and David Harewood sparring in a pioneering political commentary program at the Noel Coward Theatre. Another brilliant play by James Graham. Finally from the Duke of York's Theatre, this year's Olivier Award winner for best revival, Vanya Star, starring Andrew Scott in a solo interpretation of the iconic Chekhov play. National Theatre Live has also continued to make it easier for theatre goers to see more of the year's award nominated theatre with broadcasts of their own lauded productions of best play nominees. Dear England, which won the award, and the Motive and the Queue. And I would gladly tell you a little more of my thoughts on each of those productions, but you can actually find reviews of those right here on my YouTube channel, making this a great time to suggest that you subscribe to me here on YouTube, if you haven't already already. But that brings us up to April 2024 and the 100th National Theatre Live broadcast. This unbelievable milestone was celebrated with Nye running at the Nationals Olivier Auditorium, directed by current artistic director Rufus Norris as he approaches the end of his tenure at the venue. Michael Sheen starred as Nye Bevan, the man who transformed Britain's welfare state and created the nhs. And I do think that there's a very charming symmetry in depicting the origins of one, one hugely valued British asset, the National Health Service, within the walls of another. The National Theatre Theatre is inherently ephemeral. The evasive nature of that live experience is a big part of its allure, I think. But in the face of such a challenge, how brilliant it is that for 15 years National Theatre Live has captured the work done within those walls and found a way to share it with the world. I cannot wait to see what stories they bring us in the next 100 releases. I will be there and I hope that you join me from wherever you are. Thank you so much to the National Theatre. Thank you for National Theatre Live and the theatregoer that it turned me into. And thank you all for watching today's video. I was so excited to get the chance to talk about this topic. I hope you've enjoyed this little piece of theatre history. But having told you a little bit about my own history with these broadcasts and with the National Theatre, I would love to hear from you all as well. Which of these National Theatre Live broadcast did you see? Which of these shows did you see in person? And perhaps some of you have an even longer history with the National Theatre than I do. Let me know about it in the comments section down below. I hope that everyone is staying safe and that you have a stagey day. For 10 more seconds, I'm Mickey Jo Theatre. Oh, my God. Hey, thanks for watching. Have a stagey day. Subscribe.