If you could watch any historic theatre performances, which one(s) would you pick?

[AllaMova]

Inspired my a commenter on one of my previous threads (whose username I’ve forgotten - sorry.)

Admittedly, there are so many, which I’d chose including:

Hedda Gabler and Ghosts (both starring Alla Nazimova - my namesake!)

The Glass Menagerie (staring Laurette Taylor)

Hamlet (staring John Barrymore)

The Lady of the Camellias (staring Sarah Bernhardt)

Little Foxes (staring Tallulah Bankhead)

(And many more)

Strictly it's a concert, but it was originally performed in theatres rather than a church setting, so the first performance of Handel's Messiah with the composer conducting. It must have been amazing and so modern for the time.

Sir John Gielgud in Hamlet.

Earnest with Dame Maggie Smith

Does 2015 count? The Dazzle with Andrew Scott is absolutely the best play I've ever seen.

Alan Rickman in Les Liaisons Dangereuses. A colleague raved about it and went multiple times but I couldn’t be bothered. Regret that!

Dionysia festival in 5th century Athens - I'd struggle to pick which play as lots of them are so fab, but probably Euripedes Medea.

Although the audience was most likely restricted to adult male citizens, so I'd probably not be allowed in

I think seeing the very older productions (Sarah Siddons, etc, and even early Olivier/Guilgood/Vivian Leigh etc) would feel very oddly mannered, and paced incredibly slowly for us now. It's sad to think it but even things from 50 years ago can feel inaccessible.

Young Judy Dench as Lady Macbeth is probably as far back as I'd go.
Also would like to see Idina and Kristen in early days of Wicked or Lin Manuel M doing his opening night of Hamilton.

Opening night, Phantom of the Opera. Before it was “huge” before it became a thing, when it was “Andrew Lloyd Webber’s latest”
That would be amazing.

I got to see the opening night of wicked on broadway! It was magical!! Idina and Kristen were mind blowing together.

I saw that one - it was brilliant. Sher wrote a superb book about it too.

Yes, the Tennant Hamlet was excellent.

Like others, anything at The Globe when Shakespeare was alive.
Anything at the Cockpit in Court theatre London, in the 1620s (because I love the modern-day replica).
John Philip Kemble & Sarah Siddons in Macbeth in London in 1811.
Olivier & Gielgud in R&J, 1930s.

More recently, Mark Rylance's Twelfth Night at The Globe.
Maggie Smith stage version of The Lady in the Van.
Hamilton on Broadway when Lin-Manuel was in it.
Probably lots more!!

I'd go back & rewatch Mark Rylance as Olivia in Twelfth Night at the Globe from years ago (the original run, not the second one with Stephen Fry et al.). So good.

Rocky horror picture show in NYC with Tim Curry and Richard O'Brien etc.

Maybe whatever the earliest Shakespeare performance was where the man himself was present, so I could murder him and save many future school children being miserable during English.

Yeah, this. Especially a performance of Hamlet with Shakespeare as the ghost of Hamlet’s father (if that actually happened and isn’t an urban legend).

The original Amadeus with Paul Schofield as Salieri and Simon Callow as Mozart.

Also The Doctor's Dilemma with Vivien Leigh as Jennifer Dubedat. She was spell-bindingly beautiful and apparently in this production she just knocked everyone for six with her gorgeousness.

Judi Dench as Lady Macbeth!

Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark (2011)

If you know, you know!

Peter O'Toole in Macbeth - was reported to be so bad it was brilliant.

😂😂😂

As a Shakespeare-lover and ex-English teacher, this made me laugh!

Actually, one of my pet hates is making unacademic children 'do' Shakespeare at school - it'll put them off for life. Seeing Shakespeare, yes - that's how it's meant to happen. I don't think WS ever envisaged children sitting in a classroom poring over his text as they have to do.

(This reminds me of a funny incident in Stratford on Avon when my son was about 9. We were walking past the Grammar School where Shakespeare was a pupil and my son asked why it was called a Grammar School. I explained that the boys would study Latin and Greek grammar, and not much else in those days.

My husband muttered grumpily "At least they didn't have to do Shakespeare!", which made me double up laughing at the irony.)

James McAvoy in Cyrano de Bergerac at the National. I saw it in the cinema as part of NT live and later when it was revived in the West End I saw it twice. Absolutely outstanding.

This comment has made my entire morning! 😂

Any ballet with Rudolph Nureyev as the lead .

Hamlet with Derek Jacobi. My English teacher had seen many productions of Hamlet (occupational hazard) and said this was the only one that moved her to tears. I saw him play Richard ii and Richard iii and he was outstanding. We saw a production of The Merchant of Venice being advertising the same theatre. Decided against it. Turned out Dustin Hoffman was secretly to be playing Shylock…

What an interesting question! I'd like to see the 1681 production of Nahum Tate's The History of King Lear, with Elizabeth Barry as Cordelia.

That Godot wasn’t much good, honestly! I must have seen dozens of productions of it down the years, and I’d rank that as middling at best — soft- centred and rather luvvy-ish.