National Theatre Collection, Drama Online

Drama Online is a huge resource, developed in partnership by Bloomsbury and Faber and Faber, with a growing number of content partners including Nick Hern Books, the Arden Shakespeare, the Victoria and Albert Museum and Shakespeare's Globe. It hosts a vast amount of content with subscription packages for educational institutions by ‘collection’ – and the content ranges from video of theatre productions, to audio of the same, video workshops, play texts, and reference books on all aspects of drama: context & criticism, and theatre craft.

The scope of this review could never stretch to the full catalogue of material available on the website: effectively it is an online drama library. The latest ‘Collection’ to appear on the site, however, is the National Theatre Collection – drawing on a decade of streamed productions from the NT Live canon, never before available outside of the National Theatre's own archive. 30 productions available to stream include She Stoops to Conquer, Yerma, Othello, Macbeth, Frankenstein and Medea.

Once on the National Theatre Collection landing page of Drama Online, and logged in, navigation is extremely straightforward. The 30 available productions are sorted alphabetically, with age recommendations (Antigone, for example, is classified for ‘15+: some strong, bloody images’), a brief synopsis, and a full cast and creatives list for each one. Where available, there is also a link to accompanying teacher resources. Antigone is accompanied by its 2012 ‘Rehearsal insights’ education pack, a substantial PDF document containing a full rehearsal diary of the 6-week process written by staff director Drew Mulligan, and an interview with director Polly Findlay.

If you click on an individual production's page, you will be offered, as well as the video of the production and a repeat of its brief written synopsis, the opportunity to explore connections by place, period, theme and genre. I visited the page for Les Blancs, clicked on the theme ‘Race’ and was offered 441 search results from across Drama Online, ranging from play texts to audio. Returning to Les Blancs, I could watch the full production and also read a full transcript of its dialogue and sounds.

It's easy to see how enormously valuable this collection would be to schools. I saw many of the available National Theatre productions live when they were originally on, and attest to the quality of the performances; and the capacity for close-ups and pausing to discuss scenes and technical or directorial decisions is invaluable in a teaching environment – quite apart from the fact that many of these plays are set-texts.

For the purposes of this review, I chose to watch the full production of Yerma from the Young Vic, starring Billie Piper. It's an exceptional piece of theatre and a brilliant updating of Lorca's play for present-day London. Staged in traverse, it's extraordinary that it was possible for the production to be filmed for live streaming at all, and it was only after it was over that I really contemplated the extent to which shots must have been chosen from four different camera angles in order to tell the story. While, of course, there is no true substitute for live theatre, students can absolutely gain a sense of the staging from watching this filmed version, and in many ways the fact that one is restricted in what one sees by the choice of camera angle at any one moment only reflects the restrictions of watching a production in traverse where at any one moment at least one character is likely to be looking the other way.

Piper's performance is exemplary in this production: she remains utterly compelling despite being increasingly an extremely unsympathetic character, and her steady descent into psychosis over her obsessive desire for a child has all the depth of emotion and desperation of the finest Greek tragedies. Meanwhile, Brendan Cowell as John takes the audience on a journey from frustration at his apparent disconnectedness to pity as his wife's fixation drives her into madness.

Students will love the set in this production, and will be intrigued (particularly in this medium, without scene changes to perceive through the gloom), as to how it was done. It also presents an opportunity to explore Brechtian storytelling techniques, with titles for each scene displayed full-screen before each one. Whether or not the play is a set text for your group, the filmed production comes highly recommended.