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Even though in-person theatre and dance are back in full swing, in the name of accessibility, we're continuing to round up performances to watch online from the comfort of home. Our carefully curated list spotlights the five best options to stream this weekend, Friday, March 24 to Sunday, March 26, for free or at low cost.
Live-streaming Saturday, March 25 at 7 p.m. ET for $25
Internationally renowned German chanteuse Ute Lemper revives the songs and style of Weimar Republic Berlin in this tuneful tour of a dark period in history, as the rise of the Nazis gave birth to underground cabaret, including music written by Jewish prisoners in the Theresienstadt Ghetto. Streaming live from the cabaret hub's swanky stage. If you prefer to attend in person, click here for info.
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Streaming until Sunday, March 26 at 10 p.m. ET at a sliding scale starting at $10
New York Classical Theatre is currently presenting an in-person production of The Rewards of Being Frank, Alice Scovell's witty sequel to Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest, but you can also watch a recording online. The romp begins seven years after the nuptials of Algernon and Cecily and Ernest and Gwendolen, as they search for a tutor for their children. But when they meet Frank, a tour de farce of mistaken identity and moral conundrums ensues. Forbidden Broadway diva Christine Pedi headlines the cast as the hilarious grande dame Lady Bracknell.
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Streaming for $10
In 2020, London's lauded National Theatre launched its own streaming service featuring professional stage captures of its productions. While you can buy a subscription, shows are also available to rent individually for 72 hours. New to the roster is a stripped-down staging of Chekhov's The Seagull directed by Jamie Lloyd, currently represented on Broadway by A Doll's House. Lloyd is a master of radical reinventions of classics and this production, starring Games of Thrones' Emilia Clarke and Indira Varma and recorded on the West End last year, was polarizing, eliciting both raves and pans. But The New Yorker's Helen Shaw's swears by it, so I'm sold. A 72-hour rental costs $10 and captions are available. It's just one of many fantastic National Theatre shows you can stream, so be sure to browse the entire list.
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Streaming for FREE
In addition to being an acclaimed, Tony-winning performer, Phylicia Rashad is the Dean of Howard University's College of Fine Arts. In this new hour-long program, she directs some of her talented students in excerpts from plays by two undersung Black dramatists: Mary P. Burrill's Aftermath from 1919 and The Deacon's Awakening from 1921 by Willis Richardson. Artists and theatre scholars also discuss the playwrights and put their work in historical context.
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Streaming for free to Hulu subscribers. Click here to sign up for a one-month free trial.
A slew of musical theatre bigwigs, including married Frozen songwriters Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez, Tony-winning Dear Evan Hansen book writer Steven Levenson and Tony-winning Hamilton director Thomas Kail, are behind Up Here, a new musical rom-com series based on the 2015 musical of the same name. Inspired by the Lopezes' own courtship, the show is set in 1999 NYC and centers on a young couple (Mae Whitman and Carlos Valdes) whose burgeoning relationship is undermined by the singing voices in their heads. The supporting cast includes Broadway favorites Katie Finneran, Brian Stokes Mitchell and Andréa Burns.
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Top image: Emilia Clarke stars in Jamie Lloyd's minimalist staging of The Seagull, which is being streamed by London's National Theatre. Photo by Marc Brenner.
Raven Snook is the Editor of TDF Stages. Follow her on Facebook at @Raven.Snook. Follow TDF on Facebook at @TDFNYC.
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