The best theatre to stream this month: Shakespeare v the Tories, Mel C’s dance show and more
The Importance of Being Oscar
Micheál Mac Liammóir’s 1960 solo show interweaved the private and public lives of Oscar Wilde with excerpts from the great Irish wit’s oeuvre. Alastair Whatley – who directed The Importance of Being Earnest a few years ago – recently performed Mac Liammóir’s monologue at Reading Rep. A recording of that production, directed by Michael Fentiman, is available on Original Online from 1 July.
How Did We Get Here?
Spice Girl Melanie C had always shied away from contemporary dance. “I thought it would be intimidating,” she said last year, on the eve of her Sadler’s Wells collaboration with Jules Cunningham and Harry Alexander. But “come with an open mind and it will make you think,” she urged of the contemplative piece devised by the trio. It is now free to view until 25 July.
Shakes Against the Machine
With daily instalments in the runup to the 4 July general election, Rob Myles and Chronic Insanity theatre company’s web series mashes together news headlines from the past 14 years of Tory rule with speeches from Shakespeare to show that “the challenges we face are now at the same tragic scale as some of his darkest plays”.
Bonnie & Clyde: The Musical
In a sign of the continued tough times for live theatre, a tour of this musical about the Depression-era robbers was recently axed due to poor ticket sales. But a version filmed at Theatre Royal Drury Lane, starring Jeremy Jordan and Frances Mayli McCann, is available on demand.
Schwartz Songs
With 16 songs plucked from a back catalogue spanning half a century, all newly recorded, this Stephen Schwartz primer has three numbers from Godspell, Pippin’s Corner of the Sky, Meadowlark from The Baker’s Wife (about to be revived at Menier Chocolate Factory) and Defying Gravity sung by four of Wicked’s Elphabas: Kerry Ellis, Rachel Tucker, Lucie Jones and Alice Fearn.
Hamlet at Elsinore
How’s this for site-specific theatre? In 1964, the BBC broadcast a film of Hamlet shot entirely on location in and around Kronborg castle in Denmark. Christopher Plummer played the tragic prince, Michael Caine was Horatio and there were roles for Steven Berkoff, Lindsay Kemp and the late Donald Sutherland as Fortinbras. On iPlayer.
Starlight Express
Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Starlight Express – now whizzing about again, in a triumphant new version at London’s Troubadour – is a great introduction to musicals for kids. Yoto, an audio platform using a cheerily designed cube machine that plays “cards”, has just released a card of Starlight songs from the 1984 production (each with a colourful graphic for the machine’s screen) featuring story explainers in between.
Dub
Franco-Senegalese choreographer and former hip-hop dancer Amala Dianor’s show is an explosive hour exploring urban dance styles from around the world. Competitive, communal and irresistibly free-flowing, it tours Europe this summer but is already on Arte and YouTube, filmed at the Maison de la Culture in Grenoble.
Till the Stars Come Down
Nottingham playwright Beth Steel goes from strength to strength. After the mighty achievement of The House of Shades at the Almeida, this wedding drama brought the house down at the National’s Dorfman theatre earlier this year. Bijan Sheibani’s production is new to NT at Home.
Through the Cracks
Rip up your floorboards – with the assistance of augmented reality – to watch a world of drama unfold beneath your feet with this app created by Office of Everyone and English Touring Theatre. Each tale centres on someone who has disappeared through the cracks in some way; the first, In Time, is a queer romance written by Sonali Bhattacharyya, narrated by Ian McKellen and starring the ever-excellent Sophie Melville. Available now.
