Jude Law (The Young Pope, Closer, The Talented Mr. Ripley) stars in the stage production of Obsession, broadcast live from the Barbican Theatre in London. Ivo van Hove (NT Live: A View from the Bridge, Hedda Gabler) directs this new stage adaptation of Luchino Visconti’s 1943 film.

Gino is a drifter, down-at-heel and magnetically handsome. At a road side restaurant he encounters husband and wife, Giuseppe and Giovanna. Irresistibly attracted to each other, Gino and Giovanna begin a fiery affair and plot to murder her husband. But, in this chilling tale of passion and destruction, the crime only serves to tear them apart.

Visconti's first feature film Obsession (1943), based on James M Cain's novel The Postman Always Rings Twice, gave rise to Italian neorealism, a cinematic movement highlighting the struggles of ordinary people in a time of upheaval. As van Hove's fourth Visconti production, it features a company of Dutch and British actors led by Law, whose charismatic stage and screen performances have established him as one of the foremost actors of his generation.