Best movies like National Theatre Live: Skylight

A wife with burning desire. A husband with dangerous motives. The quest for ecstasy can turn into a struggle for survival.

A young man is plunged into a life of subterfuge, deceit and mistaken identity in pursuit of a femme fatale whose heart is never quite within his grasp

Following her husband's death, a wife discovers and confronts her husband's lover. Their mutual pain, love, envy and jealousy bring them together in an unexpected emotional and physical relationship.

This is the story of Dame Barbara Windsor, the Cockney kid with a dazzling smile and talent to match. Preparing to perform in the theatre one cold evening in 1993, the cheeky, chirpy blonde Babs recounts the people and events that have shaped her life and career over fifty years from 1943 to 1993. She contemplates her lonely childhood and WWII evacuation, her decision to go from Barbara Ann Deeks to Barbara Windsor - inspired by the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, her complicated relationship with her father, her doomed marriage to Ronnie Knight, capturing the attention of Joan Littlewood and becoming the blonde bombshell in the Carry On films. Babs, ever the consummate professional, never lets her fans down whatever her personal anguish and steps on the stage to rapturous applause.

Jennifer (Alicia Silverstone) is a lovely teen who has been hired to baby-sit the kids of Harry Tucker (J.T. Walsh) and his wife, Dolly (Lee Garlington). The Tuckers go to a party and proceed to get inebriated, with Mr. Tucker fantasizing about his beautiful baby sitter. Meanwhile, Jack (Jeremy London), her boyfriend, and Mark (Nicky Katt), another guy interested in her, decide to spy on Jennifer at the Tucker house, with each young man also fixated on her.

Frank Andrews is a successful businessman. He has always found pride and joy in the company of his wife, son and daughter. He suddenly finds himself enthralled by the advances of a gay young woman siren, who lives in the same apartment house as he does. So marked an influence does she have over him as time progresses that at last he quite forgets his home ties, neglects his family, and goes the way of many other men who have forgotten the meaning of paternity and blood ties. The story is advanced through many scenes enacted with the accompanying notes of New York's night life, and the denouement comes when the faithful wife discovers her husband's infidelity. At this time the mother's mind nearly loses balance, while Jane, the beautiful daughter, crazed by the grief of her mother, determines to take part in the tragedy. With revolver in hand she steals up to the apartment of the woman, but her frail nature is overcome by the temperamental anger of the woman and her mission fails.

A fading actor best known for his portrayal of a popular superhero attempts to mount a comeback by appearing in a Broadway play. As opening night approaches, his attempts to become more altruistic, rebuild his career, and reconnect with friends and family prove more difficult than expected.

Fred arrives at the doorstep of his beautiful young mistress Velvet after four years apart, claiming to have finally left his wife. But when she rejects his attempts to rekindle their romance, his persistence evolves into obsession — and a dark history between the former lovers comes into focus.

Tennessee Williams’ twentieth century masterpiece Cat on a Hot Tin Roof played a strictly limited season in London’s West End in 2017. Following his smash hit production of A Streetcar Named Desire, Benedict Andrews’ ‘thrilling revival’ (New York Times) stars Sienna Miller alongside, Jack O’Connell and Colm Meaney. On a steamy night in Mississippi, a Southern family gather at their cotton plantation to celebrate Big Daddy’s birthday. The scorching heat is almost as oppressive as the lies they tell. Brick and Maggie dance round the secrets and sexual tensions that threaten to destroy their marriage. With the future of the family at stake, which version of the truth is real – and which will win out?

Mary Marshall, serving a six year term for accidental manslaughter, is given a Christmas furlough from prison to visit her closest relatives, her uncle and his family in a small Midwestern town. On the train she meets Zach Morgan, a troubled army sergeant on leave for the holidays from a military hospital. Although his physical wounds have healed, he is suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and is subject to panic attacks. The pair are attracted to one another and in the warm atmosphere of the Christmas season friendship blossoms into romance, but Mary is reluctant to tell him of her past and that she must shortly return to prison to serve the remainder of her sentence.

A woman learns about the death of her Orthodox Jewish father, a rabbi. She returns home and has romantic feelings rekindled for her best childhood friend, who is now married to her cousin.

On a rainy London night in 1946, novelist Maurice Bendrix has a chance meeting with Henry Miles, husband of his ex-mistress Sarah, who abruptly ended their affair two years before. Bendrix's obsession with Sarah is rekindled; he succumbs to his own jealousy and arranges to have her followed.

Following a breakdown and suicide attempt, an aging actor becomes involved with a much younger woman but soon finds that it's difficult to keep pace with her.

Titus Tillsbury is a successful businessman who is visited by a blackmailing old flame. He enlists a friend to keep her away from his home and wife.

Sir Duncan Craggs retires from the Colonial Service and returns to London with his new French wife. The couple are devoted to each other, but continually flirt with other people. Sir Duncan is appointed to the board of clothing retail chain. On his tour of inspection, he encounters a successful store run by the efficient Mr. Bullock. By contrast, a neighbouring shop is filled with unhelpful staff overseen by an incompetent and lazy manager, Raymond Penny, who is more interested in horseracing than running his shop. Craggs is unimpressed by Penny and summons him to a meeting in London. Both Bullock and his domineering wife travel up to London as well, fearing that Penny will tell Craggs malicious stories about them.

Patti Petalson is a promising writer, but her marriage and conventional job keep her from her dream. She longs to return to her writing, especially after running into her first love Brian Callahan, a successful crime novelist. Kate is Patti's best friend since college; she's a tough-talking schoolteacher who plays therapist to all Patti's problems, while she's got a few of her own.

Successful playwright Felix Webb has a new play, 'The Hit Man', in rehearsal. Directed by his old friend Humphrey, it is already being hailed as a masterpiece; but Felix can't enjoy his success. He has fallen passionately in love with Hilary, a beautiful, fiesty young actress, and is preparing to desert his perfect family, his wife Elena and three lively children. His intolerable situation is further complicated when Humphrey casts Hilary as one of the leads in 'The Hit Man'. Enter Robin Grange, a charismatic young Hollywood actor making his London theatre debut. Robin is attractive, charming and dangerous, and soon inveigles his way into everyone's life. He ingratiates himself with the cast and, quickly grasping Felix's dilemma, sets about weaving his web of mischief. He suggests that if he were to seduce Elena, she would be distracted from Felix's affair, regain her self respect, and perhaps even willingly part from the unfaithful husband to whom she clings...

In January 1963, British journalist Leo Cauffield suddenly disappears from his home in Beirut. His wife Sally knew that he was working part-time for British intelligence, but was not prepared to be told by the British embassy that they suspect he has defected to Communist Russia. As his wife puts together the pieces of the mysterious jigsaw of the past, tracking her passionate relationship with her husband and his history as former head of MI6’s counter-espionage section, her relentless search for the truth takes her to London, New York and finally Moscow.

A woman is torn between the love of her life, who is married to someone else, and her older husband.

Fired from his skiffle band, Francis Henshall becomes minder to Roscoe Crabbe, a small time East End hood, now in Brighton to collect £6,000 from his fiancée’s dad. But Roscoe is really his sister Rachel posing as her own dead brother, who’s been killed by her boyfriend Stanley Stubbers. Holed up at The Cricketers’ Arms, the permanently ravenous Francis spots the chance of an extra meal ticket and takes a second job with one Stanley Stubbers, who is hiding from the police and waiting to be re-united with Rachel. To prevent discovery, Francis must keep his two guvnors apart. Simple.

Nolan Mack, a soft-spoken bank employee, undoubtedly loves his wife Joy, though their cavernous empty house only underscores how disconnected they’ve always been from each other. Nolan finds himself drifting from his familiar present-day life in pursuit of lost time after meeting a troubled young man named Leo on his drive home. What begins as an aimless drive down an unfamiliar street turns into a life-altering series of events.

Swinging London in the 1960's. Deals with the affection of a middle-aged man for a very young woman, resulting in a mutually parasitic relationship.

A Marine officer (John Payne) goes through Korea with the bottle of Scotch that his wife (Mona Freeman) gave him in the last war.

The National Theatre's live theatrical production of Tony Kushner's two-part play 'Angels In America' about New Yorkers grappling with the AIDS crisis during the mid-1980s.

Josh and Dinah Barkley are a successful musical-comedy team, known for their stormy but passionate relationship. Dinah feels overshadowed by Josh and limited by the lighthearted musical roles he directs her in. So she decides to stretch her skills by taking a role in a serious drama, directed by another man.

As Blanche’s fragile world crumbles, she turns to her sister Stella for solace – but her downward spiral brings her face to face with the brutal, unforgiving Stanley Kowalski.

Robert McQueen's day takes a turn for the worst when he is held hostage and accused by three vengeful husbands of sleeping with their wives.

A woman is wrongly accused of murdering her husband in Edwardian London. Just before the outbreak of World War I, Edith Graydon married her boyfriend Percy Thomson. He survives the war but theirs is not a happy marriage. She doesn't really love him and he feels it every day. He's also possessive and their daily life is a constant battle. She meets and falls in love with Frederick Bywaters, her sister's one-time boyfriend. They have a long affair and her desperate attempts to get either a formal separation of divorce from her husband falls on deaf ears. They are at their wits end and Bywaters decides to do something about it. On a dark evening when Edith is walking with her husband, Bywaters stabs him to death. Edith is charged with murder along with Bywaters and both are found guilty. She claims her innocence right up until the day they are both executed by hanging in 1923. Based on a true story.

A young London couple who have trouble remaining faithful to each other visit Italy, where the husband's cheating ways come to a head when the secret lover of his equally cheating wife turns out to be a potential business partner.

Childlike in his innocence but grotesque in form, Frankenstein’s bewildered creature is cast out into a hostile universe by his horror-struck maker. Meeting with cruelty wherever he goes, the friendless Creature, increasingly desperate and vengeful, determines to track down his creator and strike a terrifying deal. Urgent concerns of scientific responsibility, parental neglect, cognitive development and the nature of good and evil are embedded within this thrilling and deeply disturbing tale.

Fleabag may seem oversexed, emotionally unfiltered and self-obsessed, but that's just the tip of the iceberg. With family and friendships under strain and a guinea pig café struggling to keep afloat, Fleabag suddenly finds herself with nothing to lose.

In his small pub in the northern English town of Oldham, Harry is something of a local celebrity. But what's the second-best hangman in England to do on the day they've abolished hanging? Amongst the cub reporters and pub regulars dying to hear Harry's reaction to the news, his old assistant Syd and the peculiar Mooney lurk with very different motives for their visit.

Elyot Chase and Amanda Prynne are glamorous, rich, reckless…and divorced. Five years later, their love for one another is unexpectedly rekindled when they take adjoining suites of a French hotel while honeymooning with their new spouses. This chance encounter instantly reignites their passion, and they fling themselves headlong into a whirlwind of love and lust once more, without a thought for partners present or turbulences past. This Chichester Festival Theatre production of Noël Coward’s Privates Lives was filmed live at London's Gielgud Theatre.

The Fantastic Francis Hardy travels the most remote corners of Wales, Scotland and Ireland attempting to heal those who wish to be healed. His wife Grace and manager Teddy complete this nomadic triptych, each with their own telling of the loss, love and struggle of life on the road with a seemingly predestined Faith Healer.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, a rowdy young prodigy, arrives in Vienna, the music capital of the world – and he’s determined to make a splash. Awestruck by his genius, court composer Antonio Salieri has the power to promote his talent or destroy his name. Seized by obsessive jealousy he begins a war with Mozart, with music, and ultimately, with God.

Reason and judgement prove no match for the tsunami of mutual passion engulfing Mark Antony, one of the three joint rulers of the Roman republic, and Cleopatra, the seductive queen of Egypt. Surrendering everything to their desires, they open the floodgates to a civil conflict that will shake the very foundations of their world.

Grace has agreed to marry Sir Harcourt in return for his financial support of her family. At a house party in her father's place, Harcourt's son Charles also falls in love with Grace. When his father appears on the scene, he has to convince him that there is a case of mistaken identity and he is somebody else. Then Lady Gay Spanker, a married woman also visiting at the house, is persuaded by Charles to seduce his father and thus divert his attention from Grace. Much confusion and scheming ensues.

National Theatre Live’s 2010 broadcast of Alan Bennett’s acclaimed play The Habit of Art, with Richard Griffiths, Alex Jennings and Frances de la Tour, returns to cinemas as part of the National Theatre's 50th anniversary celebrations. Benjamin Britten, sailing uncomfortably close to the wind with his new opera, Death in Venice, seeks advice from his former collaborator and friend, W H Auden. During this imagined meeting, their first for twenty-five years, they are observed and interrupted by, amongst others, their future biographer and a young man from the local bus station. Alan Bennett’s play is as much about the theatre as it is about poetry or music. It looks at the unsettling desires of two difficult men, and at the ethics of biography. It reflects on growing old, on creativity and inspiration, and on persisting when all passion’s spent: ultimately, on the habit of art.

Tessa is a young, brilliant barrister. From working class origins, she has reached the top of her game. An unexpected event forces her to confront the lines where the patriarchal power of the law, burden of proof and morals diverge.

When an old adversary threatens Rome, the city calls once more on her hero and defender: Coriolanus. But he has enemies at home too. Famine threatens the city, the citizens’ hunger swells to an appetite for change, and on returning from the field Coriolanus must confront the march of realpolitik and the voice of an angry people.

Sam Shepard's Pulitzer Prize-winning play in a production by The New Group, directed by Scott Elliott. Dodge (Ed Harris) and Halie (Amy Madigan) try to hang on to their farmland and their sanity while caring for their two wayward grown sons (Rich Sommer and Paul Sparks). When their grandson (Nat Wolff) arrives no one seems to recognize him and a secret must be kept.

One summer's evening, two ageing writers, Hirst and Spooner, meet in a Hampstead pub and continue their drinking into the night at Hirst's stately house nearby. As the pair become increasingly inebriated, and their stories increasingly unbelievable, the lively conversation soon turns into a revealing power game, further complicated by the return home of two sinister younger men.

A flat in Ladbroke Grove, West London. 1952. When Hester Collyer is found by her neighbours in the aftermath of a failed suicide attempt, the story of her tempestuous affair with a former RAF pilot and the breakdown of her marriage to a High Court judge begins to emerge. With it comes a portrait of need, loneliness and long-repressed passion. Behind the fragile veneer of post-war civility burns a brutal sense of loss and longing.

A woman is driven to the unthinkable by her desperate desire to have a child in Simon Stone’s radical production of Lorca’s achingly powerful masterpiece.

Based on Michael Morpurgo's novel and adapted for the stage by Nick Stafford, War Horse takes audiences on an extraordinary journey from the fields of rural Devon to the trenches of First World War France.

A solitary woman (Melissa Leo) earning her living by delivering mail and body piercing, makes every attempt to help her volatile adult daughter (Marin Ireland) get on her feet, and in-so-doing neglects herself, channeling all of her womanly desires into her houseplants...even when a charismatic and industrious environmentalist (Josh Hamilton) moves in with them.

When the King of France (Peter Hutt) demands that John (Tom McCamus) relinquish his crown in favor of his nephew, the young Prince Arthur, war is the inevitable result. Excommunication, attempted atrocity, rebellion and assassination all contribute to a political turmoil and personal grief for a mother who has lost her son.

Sharon Blake is a successful career woman who has a passionate affair with a possessive man. When she tries to break off the relationship, she uncovers the dark side of her former lover, who starts stalking and harassing her.

Sensitive wallflower Cara exists in her humdrum life until the appearance of charismatic Jay unlocks powerful desires within her. When Jay's beautiful French lover arrives, Cara's journey to self-discovery takes a dark and unexpected turn, with tragic consequences.

Britain is in crisis. An ineffectual Queen Cymbeline rules over a divided dystopian Britain. Consumed with grief at the death of two of her children, Cymbeline's judgment is clouded. When Innogen, the only living heir, marries her sweetheart Posthumus in secret, an enraged Cymbeline banishes him. Behind the throne, a power-hungry figure plots to seize power by murdering them both. In exile Innogen's husband is tricked into believing she has been unfaithful to him and in an act of impulsive jealousy begins a scheme to have her murdered. Warned of the danger, Innogen runs away from court in disguise and begins a journey fraught with danger that will eventually reunite Cymbeline with a long-lost heir and reconcile the young lovers.