Event Cinema

Follies [TBC]

Feature Length 210 minutes

Stephen Sondheim’s legendary musical is staged for the first time at the National Theatre and broadcast live to cinemas.

New York, 1971. There’s a party on the stage of the Weismann Theatre. Tomorrow the iconic building will be demolished. Thirty years after their final performance, the Follies girls gather to have a few drinks, sing a few songs and lie about themselves.

More Info 16th November 7:00pm

Oscar Wilde Season LIVE: A Woman of No Importance [TBC]

Feature Length 150 minutes

Olivier award-winner Eve Best (A Moon for the Misbegotten and Hedda Gabler)and BAFTA nominated actress Anne Reid (Last Tango in Halifax) star in this new classically staged production of Oscar Wildes comedy directed by Dominic Dromgoole, former Artistic Director of Shakespeare's Globe. The first play from the Classic Spring Theatre Companys Oscar Wilde Season, A Woman of No Importance will be broadcast live to cinemas from the Vaudeville Theatre in London's West End.

More Info 28th November 7:15pm

The Nutcracker [TBC]

Feature Length 135 minutes

Peter Wright’s nigh-on definitive production for The Royal Ballet ranks as one of the most enduring and enchanting versions of The Nutcracker. With its festive period setting, dancing snowflakes and enchanting stage magic, Lev Ivanov’s 1892 ballet has become the perfect Christmas entertainment, with Tchaikovsky’s sumptuous, sugar-spun music the most recognizable of all ballet scores.

More Info 5th December 7:15pm

Young Marx [TBC]

Feature Length 220 minutes

Rory Kinnear (The Threepenny Opera, Penny Dreadful, Othello) is Marx and Oliver Chris (Twelfth Night, Green Wing) is Engels, in this new comedy written by Richard Bean and Clive Coleman. Broadcast live from The Bridge Theatre, London, the production is directed by Nicholas Hytner and reunites the creative team behind Broadway and West End hit comedy One Man, Two Guvnors.

More Info 7th December 7:00pm

A Christmas Carol [TBC]

Feature Length 210 minutes

Matthew Warchus directs Charles Dickens’ timeless classic in a joyous new adaptation by Jack Thorne (Harry Potter and the Cursed Child).

On a bitter Christmas Eve night a cold-hearted miser is visited by four ghosts. Transported to worlds past, present and future, Ebenezer Scrooge witnesses what a lifetime of fear and selfishness has led to and sees with fresh eyes the lonely life he has built for himself. Can Ebenezer be saved before it’s too late?

More Info 13th December 7:00pm

Rigoletto [TBC]

Feature Length 165 minutes

David McVicar’s production highlights the cruelty at the heart of the court of Mantua. Richly dressed courtiers engage in orgies and revelries to Verdi’s heady, spirited dances. The opera’s many musical highlights include the ebullient ‘La donna è mobile’, in which the Duke boasts of his disregard for women; Gilda’s exquisite, plangent duets with Rigoletto and the Duke; and the gorgeous Act III quartet that beautifully weaves the voices together as the story quickens to its shattering conclusion.

More Info 16th January 7:15pm

Tosca [TBC]

Feature Length 180 minutes

Jonathan Kent’s production for The Royal Opera captures the dangerous political turbulence of Rome in 1800. The Chief of Police, Scarpia – one of the most malevolent villains in opera – ruthlessly pursues and tortures enemies of the state. His dark, demonic music contrasts with the expansive melodies of the idealistic lovers, Tosca and Cavaradossi, who express their passion in sublime arias, including ‘Vissi d’arte’ and ‘E lucevan le stelle’. Giacomo Puccini’s dramatic work was a hit with audiences on its 1900 premiere and it remains one of the most performed of all operas – with its gripping plot and glorious music, it’s easy to see why.

More Info 7th February 7:15pm

Twelfth Night [TBC]

Christopher Luscombe, Director of the ‘glorious’ (Daily Telegraph) Love’s Labour’s Lost and Much Ado About Nothing (2014 and 2016), returns to the Royal Shakespeare Company to tackle Shakespeare’s greatest comedy, a brilliantly bittersweet account of "the whirligig of time".

More Info 14th February 7:00pm

Cat On A Hot Tin Roof [TBC]

Feature Length 185 minutes

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.

More Info 22nd February 7:00pm

The Winter's Tale [TBC]

Feature Length 180 minutes

Christopher Wheeldon, Artistic Associate of The Royal Ballet, created his adaptation of Shakespeare’s late great romance The Winter’s Tale for The Royal Ballet in 2014. Building on the success of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, The Winter’s Tale received ecstatic praise at its premiere, acclaimed by critics and audiences alike for its intelligent, distinctive and emotionally powerful story, told through exquisite dance. It is now widely judged to be a modern ballet classic.

More Info 28th February 7:15pm

Carmen [TBC]

Feature Length 200 minutes

Carmen is the best-known work by French composer Georges Bizet, and one of the most famous operas in the entire art form – numbers such as the Habanera and the Toreador Song have permeated the popular consciousness as little else has. The opera’s heady combination of passion, sensuality and violence initially proved too much for the stage, and it was a critical failure on its 1875 premiere. Bizet died shortly after, and never learned of the spectacular success his Carmen would achieve: the opera has been performed more than five hundred times at Covent Garden alone.

More Info 6th March 6:45pm

Lady Windermere's Fan [TBC]

Feature Length 150 minutes

A new production of Oscar Wilde's social comedy, Lady Windermere’s Fan, directed by award- winning writer, actor and director Kathy Burke, will be broadcast live to cinemas from the Vaudeville Theatre in Londons West End. This is the second play from the Oscar Wilde Season, a year-long celebration of the brilliant Victorian playwright being staged by Classic Spring, a new theatre company led by Dominic Dromgoole, former Artistic Director of Shakespeares Globe.

More Info 20th March 7:15pm

Julius Caesar [TBC]

Feature Length 180 minutes

Ben Whishaw (The Danish Girl, Skyfall, Hamlet) and Michelle Fairley (Fortitude, Game of Thrones) play Brutus and Cassius, David Calder (The Lost City of Z, The Hatton Garden Job)plays Caesar and David Morrissey (The Missing, Hangmen, The Walking Dead) is Mark Antony. Broadcast live from The Bridge Theatre, London.

More Info 22nd March 7:00pm

Bernstein Centenary [TBC]

Feature Length 180 minutes

Leonard Bernstein was one of the first classical composers in America to achieve both popular and critical acclaim. He was eclectic in his sources – drawing on jazz and modernism, the traditions of Jewish music and the Broadway musical – and many of Bernstein’s scores are remarkably well suited to dance. He was particularly associated with Jerome Robbins, their credits together including Fancy Free and West Side Story. To celebrate the centenary year of the composer’s birth, The Royal Ballet has united all three of its associate choreographers to celebrate the dynamic range and danceability of Bernstein’s music.

More Info 27th March 7:15pm

Macbeth [TBC]

Feature Length 200 minutes

Verdi’s life-long love affair with Shakespeare’s works began with Macbeth, a play he considered to be ‘one of the greatest creations of man’. With his librettist, Francesco Maria Piave, Verdi set out to create ‘something out of the ordinary’. Their success is borne out in every bar of a score that sees Verdi at his most theatrical: it bristles with demonic energy.

More Info 4th April 7:15pm

Manon [TBC]

Feature Length 155 minutes

Kenneth MacMillan’s source for Manon was the 18th-century French novel already adapted for opera by Massenet and Puccini. The premiere was given on 7 March 1974, with the lead roles danced by Antoinette Sibley and Anthony Dowell. The ballet quickly became a staple of The Royal Ballet’s repertory, and a touchstone of adult, dramatic dance.

More Info 3rd May 7:15pm

Swan Lake [TBC]

Feature Length 180 minutes

Swan Lake has had a special role in the repertory of The Royal Ballet since 1934. This Season The Royal Ballet creates a new production with additional choreography by Artist in Residence Liam Scarlett. While remaining faithful to the Petipa-Ivanov text, Scarlett will bring fresh eyes to the stagingof this classic ballet, in collaboration with his long-term designer John Macfarlane.

More Info 12th June 7:15pm