This warm and whimsical British satire is like a window on a bygone era. The first colour comedy from the famous Ealing Studios, it finds residents of a remote English village up in arms when they're told their train line is being shut down. In an attempt to save the service, the local vicar and squire devise a scheme for the villagers to run it themselves. The trouble is, the area bus company supports the closure and decides to sabotage their efforts - prompting the community to resurrect a vintage engine from the local museum.

Screening to celebrate the 200th Anniversary of the British Railways.

Join us for this rare screening and opportunity to delve into Douglas Sirk's masterful melodrama There's Always Tomorrow that explores the suffocating confines of middle-class domesticity.

Centered on Fred MacMurray’s deeply poignant portrayal of a husband and father who reconnects with an old flame (Barbara Stanwyck), the film examines the fleeting allure of escape and the crushing pull of societal expectations. This film’s richly detailed mise-en-scène as Sirk’s films elevate everyday objects—lamps, teacups, and furniture—to silent witnesses of emotional turmoil, amplifying the tension between characters and their environments.

The domestic items in There’s Always Tomorrow become more than mere set dressing; it serves as a narrative agent, embodying the constraints of suburban life and the unspoken desires simmering beneath its surface.

Screening as part of our short Melodrama season in collaboration with the British Film Institute

Following triumphant Met turns in Roméo et Juliette, La Traviata, and Lucia di Lammermoor, Nadine Sierra summits another peak of the soprano repertoire as Amina, who sleepwalks her way into audiences’ hearts in Bellini’s poignant tale of love lost and found. In his new production, Rolando Villazón—the tenor who has embarked on a brilliant second career as a director—retains the opera’s original setting in the Swiss Alps but uses its somnambulant plot to explore the emotional and psychological valleys of the mind. Tenor Xabier Anduaga returns after his acclaimed 2023 Met debut in L’Elisir d’Amore, co-starring as Amina’s fiancé Elvino, alongside soprano Sydney Mancasola as her rival, Lisa, and bass Alexander Vinogradov as Count Rodolfo. Riccardo Frizza takes the podium for one of opera’s most ravishing works.

Cast: 

Amina NADINE SIERRA

Lisa SYDNEY MANCASOLA

Elvino XABIER ANDUAGA

Rodolfo ALEXANDER VINOGRADOV

Creatives:

Music VINCENZO BELLINI

Conductor RICCARDO FRIZZA

Director ROLANDO VILLAZÓN

Set Designer JOHANNES LEIACKER

Costumer Designer BRIGITTE REIFFENSTUEL

Lighting Designer DONALD HOLDER

Projection Designer RENAUD RUBIANO

Choreographer LEAH HAUSMAN

Five-time Olivier Award winner Imelda Staunton (The Crown) joins forces with her real-life daughter Bessie Carter (Bridgerton) for the very first time, playing mother and daughter in Bernard Shaw’s incendiary moral classic.

Vivie Warren is a woman ahead of her time. Her mother, however, is a product of that old patriarchal order. Exploiting it has earned Mrs. Warren a fortune – but at what cost?

Filmed live from the West End, this new production reunites Staunton with director Dominic Cooke (Follies, Good), exploring the clash between morality and independence, traditions and progress.

Funny, heartfelt and emphatically moving, I Swear dramatises the true story of Tourette syndrome campaigner John Davidson and his quest to live normally in a world that insisted on calling him different.

Diagnosed aged 15, John’s Tourette’s made him the target of huge misunderstanding in 1980s Britain, and he faced hostility, bullying and occasionally outright violence for much of his youth. Aged 16, he was the subject of BBC TV documentary John’s Not Mad (a Q.E.D. episode that’s still ranked one of the 50 best British docs in national polls) and subsequently became one of the UK’s most passionate advocates for greater awareness and acceptance of Tourette’s, for which work he received an MBE in 2019.