NT Live - UK's National Theater
Broadcast Live

London’s finest is back for another season in Hudson! For those of you who’ve joined us in the past for MET Operas or last year’s NT Live performances, you may already have a sense of what’s to come. We are very excited about this year’s line up of plays coming to us straight from the UK. Highlights include an encore presentation of last season’s hit Phèdre starring Helen Mirren, Danny Boyle’s (Oscar winning director of Slumdog Millionaire) version of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Tony Award winning FELA!, and much more.

NT Live is a groundbreaking initiative by the UK’s National Theatre to broadcast live performances of plays onto cinema screens around the world. See plays put on by one of the most prestigious theaters in the world right here in Hudson – without the airfare. The NT stage performance will be filmed live in high definition and broadcast via satellite to movie theatres and performing arts centers throughout the UK and Europe, and on a time-delay basis to sites in the US including Time & Space Limited.

Please take a look at the line-up, reserve your tickets (see info below), and come join us for these outstanding performances.

Tickets are $22 for adults and $15 for children under 12. Tickets go on sale August 23rd, box office hours M-F 10 am - 4 pm. For more information call 518-822-8448 or email fyi@timeandspace.org

Complete 2010-2011 Schedule:

Phedre (Encore exhibition)

National Theatre Live launched in June 2009 with a broadcast of Phedre. Seen by over 50,000 people worldwide, don't miss your chance to see an encore screening of this smash hit production. Helen Mirren takes the title role in this savage play by Jean Racine, translated into muscular free verse by the late Poet Laureate, Ted Hughes.

Consumed by an uncontrollable passion for her young stepson and believing Theseus, her absent husband, to be dead, Phedre confesses her darkest desires and enters the world of nightmare. When Theseus returns alive and well, Phedre, fearing exposure, accuses her stepson of rape. The result is carnage.

Tickets on sale now: box office hours M-F 10 am - 4 pm. For more information call 518-822-8448 or email fyi@timeandspace.org

150 minutes

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A Disappearing Number

The internationally acclaimed theatre company Complicite's production of A Disappearing Number opened in Plymouth in 2007 and has subsequently toured all over the world. Awards include the Olivier Award for Best New Play (2008), the Evening Standard Theatre Award for Best Play (2007) and The Critics Circle Theatre Award for Best New Play (2007).

A Disappearing Number weaves together the story of two love affairs, separated by a century and a continent. The first happens now. The second is set in 1914. It tells of the heartbreaking collaboration between the greatest natural mathematician of the 20th century, Srinivasa Ramanujan, a penniless Brahmin from Madras in South India, and his British counterpart, the brilliant Cambridge don GH Hardy.

With a haunting original score by Nitin Sawhney, this piece of startling visual poetry from Simon McBurney and Complicite is a compelling meditation on love, mathematics and the pain of exile in an age when we think we can belong anywhere and have everything.

Hamlet

O, that this too too solid flesh would melt
Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew;
Or that the Everlasting had not fixed
His canon 'gainst self-slaughter. O God, God,
How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable
Seem to me all the uses of this world!

William Shakespeare's canonical tragedy, Hamlet, explores the themes of madness, rage, incest, and corruption through the story of the prince of Denmark who must avenge his father's murder. Hamlet is tormented with loathing and consumed by grief after his uncle Claudius has murdered his father the King and married his widowed mother Queen Gertrude. What he cannot foresee is the calamitous destruction that ensues.

Following his celebrated performances at the National in Burnt by the Sun, The Revenger's Tragedy, Philistines and The Man of Mode, Rory Kinnear plays Hamlet.

Fela!

A provocative and wholly unique hybrid of dance, theatre and music, FELA! explores the world of the Nigerian Afrobeat legend Fela Anikulapo-Kuti. Using his pioneering music, a blend of jazz, funk and African rhythm and harmonies, FELA! reveals Kuti's controversial life as an artist and political activist. Featuring many of Fela Kuti's most captivating songs and Bill T. Jones' visionary staging, FELA! comes to us via Broadway where it was a top hit in 2009.

Winner of three 2010 Tony Awards including Best Choreography (Bill T. Jones)

"There should be dancing in the streets. There has never been anything like this."
-Ben Brantley, New York Times

King Lear

"Who is it that can tell me who I am?"

An ageing monarch. A kingdom divided. A child's love rejected. As Lear's world descends into chaos, all that he once believed is brought into question. One of the greatest works in western literature, Shakespeare's King Lear explores the very nature of human existence: love and duty, power and loss, good and evil.

The Donmar's Artistic Director, Michael Grandage directs Derek Jacobi as King Lear.

Frankenstein

Oscar winning director Danny Boyle (Slumdog Millionaire) returns to theatre "after being distracted for 15 years by the movies," with his production of Frankenstein, a play by Nick Dear, based on the novel by Mary Shelley. The idea first conceived a decade ago by Boyle, is finally being realized as an ambitious, large-scale visual event.

Shelley's gothic novel, Frankenstein; or The Modern Prometheus, a keen allegory and commentary on the Industrial Revolution, explores early sci-fi topics such as galvanism, and themes of horror that have had a lasting influence on literature and films that followed.

The Cherry Orchard

Chekhov's last play concerns an aristocratic family's final visit to their country estate just before it is sold to pay off debts. Initially written as a comedy, but first directed as a tragedy, the play embodies the dual nature of such familial obstacles. The Cherry Orchard explores apt social and political themes of its time, such as the sense of cultural futility felt in both the fall of the aristocracy, as well as in the new materialism of the growing bourgeoisie.

Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard, directed by NT Associate Director Howard Davies, whose recent productions of Russian plays (including Philistines, Burnt by the Sun and The White Guard) have earned huge critical acclaim. Zoe Wanamaker will play Madame Ranevskaya.