A self-obsessed actor in the midst of a mid-life crisis juggles a fawning ingenue, a crazed playwright, his ex-wife, and the personal lives of his friends. Originally broadcast as an episode of the PBS series "Great Performances" (season 45, episode 4).
Garry Essendine
Liz Essendine
Monica Reed
Joanna Lyppiatt
Roland Maule
Morris Dixon
Fred
Miss Erikson
Henry Lyppiatt
Daphne Stillington
Lady Saltburn
04 Sep 2014
Medea is a wife and a mother. For the sake of her husband, Jason, she’s left her home and borne two sons in exile. But when he abandons his family for a new life, Medea faces banishment and separation from her children. Cornered, she begs for one day’s grace. It’s time enough. She exacts an appalling revenge and destroys everything she holds dear.
21 Jul 2019
A story of survival about a woman's first night in a Soviet prison camp. After committing a crime to protect her son, Anastasia is sentenced to 12 years in a Soviet prison camp. Her arrival upsets the balance between the inmates. In a night of backstabbing and shifting alliances, she must find a way to escape and discover the hidden truth of her survival.
30 Aug 1945
A man thinks he is not the father of his presumed daughter.
17 Sep 1993
In 17th-century Tuscany, a church play is performed for the benefit of young aristocrat Cosimo. In the play, a grotesque old woman gives birth to a beautiful baby boy. The child's older sister is quick to exploit the situation, selling blessings from the baby, and even claiming she's the true mother by virgin birth. However, when she attempts to seduce the bishop's son, the Church exacts a terrible revenge.
07 Feb 2008
The fantastical tale of a little girl who won't - or can't - follow the rules. Confounded by her clashes with the rule-obsessed world around her, Phoebe seeks enlightenment from her unconventional drama teacher, even as her brilliant but anguished mother looks to Phoebe herself for inspiration.
01 Oct 1993
The solo actor in Shimmer tells the story by becoming each character in turn. The play takes place in 1956, in a harsh Midwestern juvenile detention center, where two boys befriend each other.
21 Oct 2011
Set against the backdrop of the succession of Queen Elizabeth I, and the Essex Rebellion against her, the story advances the theory that it was in fact Edward De Vere, Earl of Oxford who penned Shakespeare's plays.
03 Oct 1967
A married man and his young mistress suffer sadistic torture when Tom, Dick and Harry invade their penthouse.
05 Oct 2019
Today, immense confusion reigns over the quest for the absolute, revolt and fury, violence and its appendages. And many people plunge back in Albert Camus' work to find answers. In the foreword to his play, the philosopher and writer summarizes the intrigue as follows: "In February 1905, in Moscow, a group of terrorists, belonging to the Socialist Revolutionary Party, organized a bomb attack against the Grand Duke Serge, Tsar's uncle ”. The rapper and slammer Abd Al Malik offers with this "musical tragedy" a contemporary staging of "The Just", a complete creation, faithful to the text of Camus, but reinventing a scenic and musical language resolutely inscribed in our time.
15 Jan 1969
A troubled marriage is tested by the couple's involvement in a theatrical production of Racine’s Andromaque.
09 Jan 2018
For generations, African men have gathered in barber shops to discuss the world. These are places where the banter can be barbed and the truth is always telling. Follow along as we leap from a barber shop in Peckham to Johannesburg, Harare, Kampala, Lagos and Accra over the course of a single day.
01 Nov 1931
A criminologist investigates the murder of a Broadway producer on an ocean liner.
27 Apr 2004
The popular Arnold Wesker play filmed at the Bristol Old Vic.
25 Dec 2004
Although this sounds like a weekend like many others, in the Prior house the atmosphere is rather tense because of some nervousness on the part of individual members of the family, especially the father, Peppino, who gets angry with anyone who happens to shoot: with their children, Juliana and Roberto, and his sister, aunt Meme. Meanwhile, his wife Rosa is dedicated to the preparation of the sauce, which she will serve for Sunday's lunch, to which she invited the neighbors, the accountant Ianniello and his wife.
16 Apr 1981
Timon loves to give parties and objects to friends, but when he cannot pay his creditors, his "friends" refuse to help him, and he becomes a misanthropic hermit.
02 Feb 1982
Harry is a shy hardware store employee. But whenever he takes a part in a local amateur theater production, he becomes the part completely--while on stage. Helene is new in town, a lonely itinerant telephone company employee. On a whim, she auditions for and gets the part of Stella to Harry's Stanley when the theater group performs A Streetcar Named Desire. Before anyone realizes the growing affection between Helene and Stanley, she falls deeply in love with the sexy brute, not knowing what the real man is like.
02 Mar 1971
The story is set during the South American Wars of Independence. Simón Bolivar, the liberator, has escaped from Spanish custody with the aid of an idealistic Spanish officer, Captain Montserrat. The Spanish commander, Colonel Izquierdo ('left' in Spanish), threatens Montserrat with torture to find out where Bolivar can be recaptured.
01 Jan 1990
A recording of the legendary production “Audience“ from the Prague Drama Club with Josef Abrhám and Pavel Landovský. In 1975, Václav Havel worked as a labourer in the brewery in Trutnov; he could do nothing else. And it was here that he made perhaps his most successful one-act play, Audience, about the writer Ferdinand Vanek, who is invited by his superior to offer him a deal - a promotion to warehouse keeper, but in return has to inform on himself for StB reports.
16 Jul 2015
Everyman is successful, popular and riding high when Death comes calling. He is forced to abandon the life he has built and embark on a last, frantic search to recruit a friend, anyone, to speak in his defence. But Death is close behind, and time is running out. One of the great primal, spiritual myths, Everyman asks whether it is only in death that we can understand our lives. A cornerstone of English drama since the 15th century, it now explodes onto the stage in a startling production with words by Carol Ann Duffy, Poet Laureate, and movement by Javier De Frutos.
01 Sep 2002
When Madea gets sick, her family comes to her aid. What they don't realize is that they're the ones who need her help. As always, Madea's cockeyed outlook on life saves the day and guarantees side-splitting laughs along the way.