National Theatre Live: The Motive and the Cue

Two Kinds of Women

The daughter of a senator from South Dakota visits Manhattan for the first time, eager to see the sights of the big city. While there, she finds herself caught up in an affair with a married man, whose wife soon commits suicide. Complications ensue.

Soldier Boy

This is a story about exciting events that occurred in the life of the smallest soldier - the hero of the Great Patriotic War, six-year-old Sergei Aleshkov. He lost all his relatives and got into the army. With a six-year-old boy, they started playing the soldier game in order to preserve his childhood, and he, in order to comply with this honorary title, became a real defender of the Motherland.

The Post Office

Amol, a child, is confined to his adoptive uncle's home by an incurable disease. He stands in the courtyard and talks to passers-by and inquires about the places they go to. The construction of a new post office nearby prompts the imaginative Amol to fantasise about receiving a letter from the King or being his postman.

Colette

After marrying a successful Parisian writer known commonly as Willy, Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette is transplanted from her childhood home in rural France to the intellectual and artistic splendor of Paris. Soon after, Willy convinces Colette to ghostwrite for him. She pens a semi-autobiographical novel about a witty and brazen country girl named Claudine, sparking a bestseller and a cultural sensation. After its success, Colette and Willy become the talk of Paris and their adventures inspire additional Claudine novels.

An Ideal Husband

Sir Robert Chiltern is a successful government minister, well-off and with a loving wife. All this is threatened when Mrs Cheveley appears in London with damning evidence of a past misdeed. Sir Robert turns for help to his friend Lord Goring, an apparently idle philanderer and the despair of his father. Goring knows the lady of old, and, for him, takes the whole thing pretty seriously.

The Hillside Strangler

Kenneth Bianchi is a security guard whose attempts to become a police officer are repeatedly thwarted. He moves to California to live with his cousin Angelo and dates a string of women, becoming increasingly preoccupied with sex. Eventually the cousins decide to start an escort agency. After violently killing a prostitute they thought had betrayed them, Kenneth and Angelo begin committing a series of crimes that become a media sensation.

The Janitor

Crisanto Espina, a cop on suspension and under investigation, is tasked to eliminate the suspects involved in a bank robbery/massacre that shocked the whole nation.

Coco Chanel

Fashion icon Coco Chanel, steeped in wealth and fame, still issues game-changing designs and collections. The audience is taken backwards in time to the woman's upbringing in an orphanage, and traces her path to ubiquity as it winds through poverty, wars, doomed romances, and rather glamorous betrayals.

The Walk

The story of French high-wire artist Philippe Petit's attempt to cross the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in 1974.

K2

They call it the savage mountain. 27 people have perished trying to reach the summit on K2, the world's second highest peak. A U.S. climbing team, funded by millionaire Clairborne is determined to conquer K2.

Agnes of God

When a dead newborn is found, wrapped in bloody sheets, in the bedroom wastebasket of a young novice, psychiatrist Martha Livingston is called in to determine if the seemingly innocent novice, who knows nothing of sex or birth, is competent enough to stand trial for the murder of the baby.

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

In 1846, Anthony Hope sails into London with the mysterious Sweeney Todd, a once-naive barber whose life and marriage was uprooted by a corrupt justice system. Todd confides in Nellie Lovett, the owner of a local meat pie shop, and the two become partners, as Todd swears revenge on those that have wronged him and decides to take up his old profession.

Solos

The Leventopaido

Aristos, a ship worker and singer at a popular tavern in the evening, is preparing to marry a poor girl, Maryio. One night at the shop comes the rich Elena, which hides the truth about her financial situation, he falls in love with her and separates him from Maryio. However, after an accident, the real identity of Elena is revealed, as is the fact that she is betrothed. Elena, seeing the misfortune she has scattered around her, pretends that Aristos was just an adventure for her and lets him return to Maryio.

Komang

Fate brought together Ode, a young man from Buton with big dreams, and Ade, a wanderer from Bali. Like two souls in love, they believed that fate would one day unite them. However, their journey was hindered by the presence of another man who shared the same faith as Ade, and Ode had to go to Jakarta to pursue his dreams. Will fate ultimately bring Ode and Ade together?

Corbo

Montreal, spring 1966. Jean Corbo, 16 years old, born to a Quebec mother and an Italian father, is torn between his two affiliations. After befriending two young far-left activists, he joined the Front de Libération du Québec, an underground radical group. Jean, from then on, marches inexorably towards his destiny.

The Time of Your Life

William Saroyan's Pulitzer Prize-winning play revolves around the denizens of a San Francisco bar in 1939. Lonely, lovelorn, weary or cynical, the characters drift in and out of the bar and each other's lives, giving voice to Saroyan's philosophies as they randomly comment about the impending world war, the beauty of art, and traditional notions of good and evil. At least one of the relationships stands a chance of enduring: a brawny innocent named Tom is falling in love with a vulnerable young prostitute named Kitty. Saroyan himself is heard reciting the play's prologue.

Hurlyburly

A group of actors and their casting agents try to find a direction in their lives whilst coming to terms with their personal problems and relationship conflicts.

The Indian Runner

Two brothers cannot overcome their opposite perceptions of life. One brother sees and feels bad in everyone and everything, subsequently he is violent, antisocial and unable to appreciate or enjoy the good things which his brother desperately tries to point out to him.

Rosewood

Spurred by a white woman's lie, vigilantes destroy a black Florida town and slay inhabitants in 1923.