This month brings a rare opportunity to watch a Tony-nominated Broadway hit live from New York, along with revivals of classics like Rent, The Audience, and Hugh Jackman as a singing cowboy.
Fallen Angels
Livestreams of current Broadway hits remain incredibly rare, and this production has been one of the hottest tickets of the season. In the 100th birthday revival of Noël Coward's comedy, Rose Byrne and Kelli O'Hara knock back cocktails while awaiting the arrival of a mutual old flame. The stars are competing against each other at this month's Tony Awards, for which the play has earned a total of five nominations. Available from BroadwayHD on 5 June.
Romeo and Juliet
Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev are said to have received 43 curtain calls for playing Shakespeare's star-crossed lovers in Kenneth MacMillan's ballet at the Royal Opera House in 1965. But there is plenty to enjoy beyond their tender partnering, not least the stage filling up for Prokofiev's imperious Montagues and Capulets. On BBC iPlayer.
Rent: Filmed Live on Broadway
Jonathan Larson's rock opera returns to London this autumn, so here is a timely rewind to the 2008 Broadway staging. It is much better than the 2005 movie. Renée Elise Goldsberry makes a wonderful Mimi: forlorn, funny, and flirty all at once in Light My Candle, her bright duet with Will Chase. On Prime Video.
Oklahoma!
Before becoming Wolverine and Jean Valjean or starring in The Greatest Showman, Hugh Jackman was baritone cowboy Curly ("virile and melodious" according to our Michael Billington) in a rousing version of Rodgers and Hammerstein's first musical, directed by Trevor Nunn at the National Theatre in 1998. A new arrival to NT at Home.
The Audience
Within three years of being made a dame by Queen Elizabeth II, Helen Mirren was playing the monarch herself in Peter Morgan's 2006 film The Queen. She returned to the role in 2013 in Morgan's West End play The Audience, which imagined eight prime ministers' private conversations with her. On NT at Home from 2 June.
Flip!
Milli Bhatia directs Racheal Ofori's radio adaptation of her satirical 2023 stage play. It is about two content creators who experiment with a new app that promises to expand their reach but could jeopardise their friendship. A sparky comedy that gives serious attention to the combative online world. On BBC Sounds.
Cyrano de Bergerac
Adrian Lester's RSC Cyrano arrives in London this month, and if you are curious about past productions, then the 2007 US revival by David Leveaux ("rapier wit" raved the New York Times) is on BroadwayHD. Kevin Kline plays Monsieur De Cyrano, wooing Jennifer Garner's Roxane.
François Chaignaud: Petites Joueuses
Recently the Louvre has made more headlines for its disrepair and the unwelcome drama of its daylight jewellery heist than for art. But in 2024, choreographer François Chaignaud created a four-hour carnivalesque performance in the bowels of the museum to accompany its exhibition on medieval fools. A half-hour film is on Arte.TV.
