National Theater's "Romeo & Juliet" Coming To PBS' 'Great Performances'

Though live performances are largely still shuttered over a year into the coronavirus pandemic, fans of Shakespeare can rejoice, and those who have needed a jolt of theatrical goodness are in for a treat. PBS's Great Performances has picked up the rights to Romeo & Juliet, the planned 2020 flagship production for the Royal National Theatre in London. The show, which was about to go into rehearsals in March of 2020, was reconceived as a made-for-TV movie. The film just aired in the U.K. on SkyArts on April 4. Now it heads across the pond for us, with a premiere on Friday, April 23.

As the pandemic has stretched on, Broadway and the West End have had to get creative to survive. The hunger for theatrical performances is out there. Hamilton was a smash hit for Disney+, Between The World & Me a fascinating experiment for HBO, and the not-yet-opened Diana stage show is doing a filmed version for Netflix to promote itself for when ticket-buyers return. Over in the U.K., the situation was similar, with the National Theatre suddenly bereft of its headline production Romeo & Juliet.

In another world, the show might have followed the Diana model and done a filmed stage performance. The National Theatre, one of the U.K.'s most prominent publicly funded arts institutions, has become famous over the last decade for airing live performances in select movie theaters for those who cannot make it to London. (Those airing happen here in the U.S. too, but only in select theaters and arthouses.) Those performances are even streamable for those who subscribe to the National Theatre Live service, NTatHome.