The Cherry Orchard (ntathome.com)
Verdict: Bittersweet cherries
I Want My Hat Back (ntathome.com)
Verdict: The hat fits, so I’m wearing it!
Rating: 
Dear reader, dare I ask if, like me, you’ve lost track of your monthly entertainment subscriptions?
I am thinking Netflix (£5.99), Now TV (£9.99), Apple TV+ (£4.99) and Disney+ (£5.99).
However, I have a bad feeling there may be more, turning over on auto-renew . . .
Be that as it may, it’s surely worth doing a cost-benefit analysis of the National Theatre’s impressive new portal, ntathome.com, which launched this week.
It offers access to top-of-the-range recordings of some of its greatest hits of recent times — accessible on phones, tablets and tellies (with internet access).
Offerings include Helen McCrory’s Medea and Helen Mirren’s Phedre.
Peerless stars: Zoe Wanamaker and Conleth Hill in The Cherry Orchard
If there’s one thing Covid has taught British theatre, it is that it’s a very marketable commodity. Oh, and you should film everything.
The National Theatre had 15 million views of its free online content this summer. In context, that’s about 15 times its annual capacity of almost one million.
The new service will potentially earn it a considerable amount of dosh — especially if subscribers max out on the annual fee of £99.98, or £9.98 a month, for unlimited access. (For comparison, posh arts platform Marquee TV carries RSC plays, ballet and opera from Glyndebourne, Covent Garden and the Met in New York for £4.99 per week, £8.99 per month or £89.99 per year, after a 14-day trial.)
But some NT supporters may baulk, feeling that they have paid quite enough to the institution already, in tickets and in taxes.
Renting The Cherry Orchard for £7.99 may seem easier on the cash flow. But compared to Now TV’s £9.99 monthly entertainment pass — covering blockbuster shows such as The Undoing — it is still quite steep.
So what do you get for your money? Well, let’s start with Howard Davies’s 2011 production of Chekhov’s masterpiece The Cherry Orchard, boasting tidily updated dialogue from Mr Cate Blanchett (Andrew Upton).
Zoe Wanamaker plays a Russian landowner at the turn of the 20th century who’s been bankrupted by feckless partners and is forced to sell the family home with its beloved orchard.
Wanamaker is baroque in her self-dramatisation and devout in her determination to reject reality. Conleth Hill, as the former serf who offers to buy the estate, could do more to earn her contempt.
But he is a peerless actor, bringing dignity to his role. Then there’s the support: Claudie Blakley, as Wanamaker’s lovelorn daughter; and Mark Bonnar as a long-haired student hitting middle age.
And who wouldn’t want to watch Kenneth Cranham as the senile butler? I’d probably pay just to hear him read NT at Home’s terms and conditions.
The production does look slightly stretched on the Olivier’s yawning stage, and feels even longer than it did at the theatre (159 minutes, plus some pleas for further donations to the NT’s coffers).
But there is a gathering sadness to its course which I certainly found affecting at the finish.
T here are also lighter options, including the brilliantly bonkers 2015 production of Jon Klassen’s toddlers’ story I Want My Hat Back.
The hour-long tale of a bear enraged by the loss of his red pointy party hat (sometimes it’s the little things) flew by for me.
Marek Larwood in I Want My Hat Back
Marek Larwood is brilliant as the grizzly, fitted with a brown balaclava with ears, fur coat, sheepskin slippers and Led Zep T-shirt.
He’s like a cross between an inebriated Cockney cab driver and a slightly less dishevelled Boris Johnson.
Performed on a shag-pile carpet surrounded by 1960s decor, and backed by Arthur Darvill’s music — a mix of flamenco trumpet, circus drumming and piano — it’s a wonderfully simple pleasure.
And at £5.99 to rent, parents may want to compare that to the price of renting Frozen. I would much rather sing along to I’ve Got A Hat And It’s On My Head than yet another round of Let It Go.
I would therefore like to propose taking out a month’s subscription and cancelling auto-renewal.
That way you can binge now, and rent or renew later. After all, we are promised many more top titles in the months to come.
Say boo-hiss to 2020 at a real live panto
Oh no they won’t . . . oh yes they will. The debate about whether or not this year’s pantomimes would go ahead has raged since Covid first made its entrance in the spring, to a chorus of disapproval.
Thankfully, some enticing shows are being performed live, in front of actual people, albeit in truncated form (the shows, that is, not the people). All the pantos mentioned are being presented in one act, to minimise the risk.
If you want an outlet for your pent-up 2020 boos and hisses then a treat awaits at the New Victoria Theatre in Woking, Surrey, where Strictly Come Dancing’s resident meanie Craig Revel Horwood stars as an even bigger grouch, the Sheriff of Nottingham, in Robin Hood (December 18-January 10; followed by The Alexandra in Birmingham, January 15-31, atgtickets.com). He, um, revels in winding up the audience. Light relief comes from Richard Cadell & Sooty.
Another must-see is Robinson Crusoe at Theatre Royal Plymouth (December 12-January 3; theatreroyal.com, 01752 267222) as it stars the brilliant Les Dennis, who will be getting out the false bosoms to play the Dame. He’s joined by Blue band member Simon Webbe, who will be swashing his buckle in the title role.
At the Mayflower in Southampton, Lesley Joseph from Birds Of A Feather stars as the wicked fairy Carabosse in Sleeping Beauty (December 19-January 3, mayflower.org.uk, 02380 711811). Loveable joker Joe Pasquale is typecast as Muddles the jester.
Debbie McGee, meanwhile, has picked up her magic wand at the Theatre Royal Windsor to play the Fairy Godmother in Cinderella (until January 10, theatreroyal windsor.co.uk, 01753 853 888). Her co-star is the inimitable Basil Brush.
Potted Panto at London’s Garrick Theatre (December 5-January 10, nimaxtheatres.com, 0330 333 4811) offers terrific value for those whose Christmas schedules are tight. Daniel Clarkson and Jefferson Turner, who previously condensed Harry Potter to great acclaim, offer a madcap gallop through seven classic pantomimes . . . in just 70 minutes.
Dick Whittington (December 11-January 23, nationaltheatre.org.uk) is the National Theatre’s first foray into panto. It was written by Jude Christian and Cariad Lloyd for the Lyric Hammersmith, where it ran in 2018. But it has been updated, so expect jokes about lockdowns . . . and another former London mayor, Boris Johnson.
Lastly, if you like your pantomime sans sugary sweetness but with plenty of, er, baubles, Cinderella: The Socially Distanced Ball at the Turbine Theatre in London (until December 23, theturbinetheatre.com, 020 7851 0300) may appeal. Jodie Prenger and Neil Hurst’s new take on the tale is not for the faint-hearted, as the cast, including Rufus Hound and Debbie Kurup, indulge in some smutty fun.
VERONICA LEE