The Little Big Things
One of the most celebrated new British musicals in recent years, this true story about Henry Fraser, a young rugby player paralysed in an accident, extended its run at London’s @sohoplace by three months. Fresh from Amy Trigg’s Olivier win as best actress in a supporting role in a musical, it joins the NT at Home collection from 9 May.
Good
CP Taylor’s complex study of nazism’s rise in the 1930s was given a gripping revival by director Dominic Cooke in the West End in 2022. David Tennant stars as the German professor drawn into atrocity, Sharon Small is his wife and Elliot Levey excels as his Jewish best friend. On BBC iPlayer.
Shakespeare Uncovered
Ian McKellen, Patrick Stewart and David Harewood are among the guests on a second series of the documentary about the Bard’s brilliance which includes Hugh Bonneville getting to the bottom of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. From MarqueeTV.
Murder in the Dark
Torben Betts’ twisty thriller, set in an isolated cottage on New Year’s Eve, stars Tom Chambers as a washed-up singer holidaying with his fractious family. Filmed at Southend’s Palace theatre, directed by Philip Franks, it’s available now to Original Online members, and is on general release from 24 May.
Family Business
What might customers at the “never knowingly undersold” department store John Lewis tell us about the state of the nation? Alecky Blythe talked to shoppers whose purchases reflected their life changes – and then checked in with them again 10 years later. On BBC Sounds.
John & Jen
Andrew Lippa and Tom Greenwald’s musical two-hander, filmed at Southwark Playhouse in 2021, explores America’s political landscape through a woman’s relationships with her brother and her son. Rachel Tucker and Lewis Cornay star. From Digital Theatre.
Richard II
Stephen Jackman-Torkoff was a revelatory Richard II in Stratford festival’s explosive 2023 production set in 1970s New York, complete with disco floorfillers, outre outfits and hot-tub sex. Brad Fraser’s inspired version includes lines from Venus and Adonis, Much Ado and the Fair Youth sonnets. From StratFest@Home.
Constellations
Choose your own cast for Nick Payne’s play about love and the multiverse as the Donmar Warehouse’s four versions, performed in 2021, are all now available from NT at Home. The pairings are Sheila Atim and Ivanno Jeremiah, Peter Capaldi and Zoë Wanamaker, Omari Douglas and Russell Tovey, and Anna Maxwell Martin and Chris O’Dowd.
The Winter’s Tale
Designer Bob Crowley’s radiant creation of Bohemia in Christopher Wheeldon’s ballet must be among the sunniest transformations of the Royal Opera House stage. It returns to Covent Garden this month but you can stream it too. Also available on Opus Arte’s three-disc Wheeldon collection which includes Like Water for Chocolate and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
Siân Phillips at 90
“Behind a lot of huge glamorous success stories is a hard, hard worker,” says Eileen Atkins of her fellow dame, Siân Phillips, in this 90th birthday tribute on BBC iPlayer. Phillips looks back on her many stage and screen roles, and her marriage to Peter O’Toole, in a candid documentary that begins in her pilates studio.
