Oodles of American regional theaters are turning 50 this year or pretty darn soon. Locally, the Goodspeed is just concluding its 50th anniversary, while Hartford Stage’s is next year, with Long Wharf due to turn 50 in 2015 and the Yale Rep in 2016. Nationally, the Guthrie, Seattle Rep, Trinity Rep and Actors Theatre of Louisville all hit 50 this year.
In England, 50 ain’t much of a milestone; the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane dates back to the 17th century. But one of the most youthfully vigorous of world theater institutions, the National Theatre, has reached that age and is being duly celebrated.
BBC Radio 4 Extra is the online channel for the British public broadcasting network’s spoken word and comedy shows. I listen to something on this channel virtually every day. In recent weeks, that’s meant an audiobook version of Geoffrey Household’s soy thriller Rogue Justice, a radio dramatization of the Tintin graphic novels, Bill Nighy and Helena Bonham Carter starring in Noel Coward’s Private Lives and Nighy again as Simon Brett’s crimesolving actor Charles Paris.
BBC Radio Four Extra shows have regular airdates, then are available in streaming online versions for a week after those first airings.
For the next couple of weeks, BBC Radio 4 is presenting radio version of some of the National Theatre’s biggest hits, plus documentary specials on the history of this London-based institution.
One of those docs, The National Theatre at 50, is still available for online listening through Oct. 26.
Bill Bryden’s revision of the medieval mystery plays, The Mysteries, has been cut into short segments broadcast Oct. 20 through 25 (and thus variously online through the 1st of November). Also already out there to listen to, through Oct. 27, is Kwame Kwei-Armah’s award-winning 2003 drama Elmina’s Kitchen.
Alan Bennett’s The History Boys airs Oct. 26.
Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus in on the station Oct. 27.
Howard Brenton’s Pravda, starring Bill Nighy and Anthony Hopkins, is Nov. 3.
For more details, see http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03glsms
One of the documentaries is actually a play about about a play. The Third Soldier Holds His Thighs dramatizes the uproar over Howard Brenton’s play 1982 The Romans in Britain, with Eleanor Bron playing the censorious Mary Whitehouse, Simon Callow as Peter Hall and key members of the Romans in Britain cast/defendants as themselves. The rather cheesey, double-entendre-filled one-hour special, written by Mark Lawson (host of the nightly BBC arts show Front Row), is listenable through Oct. 28—presuming you push the button that lifts the “parental guidance lock” on the show and confirm that you’re over 16 years old.
Just remember, you’ve got a whole week after the first broadcast before a show expires.
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Happy 50th, National Theatre! The image above is of a souvenir I got on a trip to England in the late 1990s. On our way to see Terry Johnson play Cleo, Camping, Emanuelle and Dick, I told a British friend I was staying with that I wanted to find a tacky English souvenir wristwatch to replace one I’d just broken. “Well,” she said, not intending for to sound as snooty as she did, “you won’t find anything like that at the National Theatre!” I did find such a thing, obviously. Plus some postcards and cassette tapes lauding the saucy Carry On films (the subject of Johnson’s play). I still have those souvenirs too. But, with an anniversary to mark, my National Theatre watch is most timely.