Susan Williamson

Writer and Director Mike Leigh discusses the techniques used to create his plays.

In Charenton Asylum, the Marquis de Sade directs a play about Jean Paul Marat's death, using the patients as actors. Based on 'The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade', a 1963 play by Peter Weiss.

Newlyweds Chris and Sally are young and attractive, with successful careers and a beautiful home. Their future is rosy. However, trying to make marriage work is not easy.

In the late 1930s, three reclusive middle-aged spinster sisters live on their run down family estate in Ireland. Otto Beck, a perpetual graduate student from Bavaria with a habit of making pompous declamations, rents the back lodge to work on his esoteric thesis. Imogen Langrishe, the least repressed of the sisters, begins an affair with Otto. Imogen takes the love affair seriously, but Otto just enjoys the cheap lodging and the comfort of Imogen.

Eames is a middle aged man, with a boring, routine job. His life changes when he meets a young girl and a painter. This rekindles his youthful artistic leanings, which he blames his father for stopping.