The Best National Theatre at Home Productions to Stream (at Home)
Looking for more theatrical pro-shots from London to watch once you’ve seen 'Hadestown'? National Theatre at Home is here for you.
There’s nothing in the world like British theater. Sure, Americans have Broadway, which is big and loud and has a storied history of flashy musicals and big-name movie stars treading the boards on occasion. But theater in the U.K. is on another level. After all, the West End’s — and the world’s — oldest venue, the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, first opened its doors in May, 1663. That’s the kind of history few nations will ever be able to equal.
The National Theatre — in its current location on the Southbank — may have only been around since 1976, but has seen some of the greatest actors of our time perform on its stages. (Its first Artistic Director was none other than Laurence Olivier.) Also, thankfully, the organization has always prioritized maintaining archives of its performances.
Some you can only view via appointment in London, but ever since the launch of the National Theatre Live program in 2009, many of the company’s best productions have been broadcast to cinemas around the world. Since 2020, there’s National Theatre at Home, a streaming service that offers access to many outstanding performances from the comfort of your couch. But where should you start?
Here’s a rundown of some of the best plays available to stream via National Theatre at Home right now.
Nye
Michael Sheen (Good Omens) stars as beloved politician Aneurin “Nye” Bevan, widely regarded as one of the most influential left-wing politicians in British history. Bevan, a well-known orator and activist in the Welsh mining community in his hometown of Tredegar, went on to serve as Minister of Health in Clement Atlee’s government and spearheaded the creation of Britain’s National Health Service in 1948.
Written by Tim Price, Nye is set during Bevan’s hospitalization with the stomach cancer that will eventually kill him, as he experiences a series of memories and flashbacks which detail his remarkable personal journey. Sheen is great throughout, in a story with a surprisingly timely and powerful message about dignity and the care we owe to one another.
Inter Alia
One of the most recent additions to the National Theatre at Home slate is Inter Alia, the latest play from Prima Facie writer Suzie Miller. (Fun fact: Prima Facie is also often available on NT at Home, though it’s not at the moment this list is being compiled. Check back!)
The production stars Rosamund Pike (The Wheel of Time), who won an Olivier Award for Best Actress for her performance as London Crown Court Judge, Jessica Parks, a magistrate frequently asked to rule on cases involving accusations of sexual violence. But when a dark event takes place within her own family, everything she knows is suddenly called into question. Fair warning: this story deals with some dark and uncomfortable subject matter, but Pike is a powerhouse even in its ugliest moments.
Frankenstein
If you need a reason to check this particular play out: Director Danny Boyle’s Frankenstein ran at the National Theatre for five months in early 2011 and is still so popular that it’s regularly trotted out for National Theatre Live cinema screenings a decade later.
Its unique staging — which saw stars Benedict Cumberbatch (Sherlock) and Jonny Lee Miller (Elementary) swap roles as Frankenstein and his Creature every other night — draws uncomfortable parallels between monster and man, allowing both actors to find humanity and commonality in each.
Medea
One of the greatest things about British theater is how regularly its companies — and not only the National! — stage the kinds of literary classics that their American counterparts tend to ignore. (A revival of Oedipus was just on Broadway, but that was after it was a huge hit in London first.) Anyway, this is a lot to say that if you have a desire to see the words of playwrights like Sophocles and Aeschylus come to life, there’s a lot here for you.
One of the best Greek tragedies available on National Theatre at home is Euripides' Medea, a 2014 production starring the late, great Helen McCrory (Peaky Blinders) in the titular role. McCrory’s performance is both moving and ferocious as a woman willing to destroy everything she loves — including her own children — in the name of getting revenge.
Macbeth
Ralph Fiennes (Conclave) stars as the doomed Scottish king in this buzzy 2023 production of Macbeth that reimagines William Shakespeare’s great tragedy as a war story. Staged in an immersive setting featuring camo fatigues, burned-out vehicles, and visible remnants of battle — audiences walked to their seats through a hyperrealistic no man’s land — it’s a take that’s all about atmosphere.
To his credit, Fiennes makes for a compelling Macbeth, who steadily grows more monstrous as the story goes on, and is balanced out by the equally excellent Indira Varma (The Other Bennet Sister), a Lady Macbeth who is ambitious and vulnerable by turns. (Plus, the fight scenes toward the play’s end are great.)
Good
Good is not a play for the faint of heart. CP Taylor’s harrowing tale of a German professor’s slow slide into Nazism is capital D dark, but feels even more relevant to our current moment than it did when this version was staged in 2022.
David Tennant (Rivals) manages to make John Halder feel deeply human and horrifying simultaneously, a man who is susceptible to the world’s worst sort of ideology precisely because he himself believes in so little beyond himself. The show is utterly enraging, and impossible to look away from.
The Importance of Being Earnest
The National Theatre’s 2024 revival of The Importance of Being Earnest somehow manages to infuse Oscar Wilde’s comedy of manners with even more queer energy thanks to its colorful staging and chaotically camp vibes.
Fifteenth Doctor Ncuti Gatwa (Doctor Who) and Hugh Skinner (Fleabag) star as Algernon Moncrief and his friend Jack Worthing, a pair of wisecracking bachelors who get into exceptionally complicated schemes together, involving everything from using fake identities to inventing nonexistent friends to impress women. Or at least maintain the facade of being interested in women. (See also: Big queer energy.) It’s delightful from start to finish.
Yerma
In 2018, former Doctor Who companion Billie Piper became the first — and so far, the only — actor to sweep all six of the currently available U.K. Theatre Best Actress awards for a single performance. That performance was in a play called Yerma, a simultaneously brutal, heartfelt, and hilarious story about a woman in her 30s who is desperate to have children and whose despair grows to nigh-on unbearable levels when it becomes apparent that she cannot.
Piper is absolutely as good as everyone says — the London papers described her performance using words like “devastating” and “breathtakingly uninhibited” — but the play’s subject matter is extremely heavy. Approach with caution if necessary.
Mrs. Warren’s Profession
The great Imelda Staunton (The Crown) joins forces with her real-life daughter, Bessie Carter (Outrageous), in this 2025 revival of George Bernard Shaw’s 1892 problem play, Mrs. Warren’s Profession. A story about sex work and economic exploitation, public performances of the play were initially banned for decades because of the frank way it treated organized prostitution as a frequent necessity of survival rather than a moral failing.
Not every aspect of Shaw’s play translates perfectly for our modern moment. Still, it works as an exploration of a complicated mother-daughter relationship – as well as a stark reminder that women have always been required to make moral compromises to survive the patriarchy.
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