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).
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.
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.
A man thinks he is not the father of his presumed daughter.
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.
Traveling rainmaker Starbuck arrives at the drought-ridden Curry place, promising rain for the farm and perhaps a romance for 'spinster sister' Lizzie.
National Theatre Live’s 2010 broadcast of Alan Bennett’s acclaimed play The Habit of Art, with Richard Griffiths, Alex Jennings, and Frances de la Tour, returns to cinemas as part of the National Theatre's 50th anniversary celebrations. Benjamin Britten, sailing uncomfortably close to the wind with his new opera, Death in Venice, seeks advice from his former collaborator and friend, W H Auden. During this imagined meeting, their first for 25 years, they are observed and interrupted by, amongst others, their future biographer and a young man from the local bus station. Alan Bennett’s play is as much about the theatre as it is about poetry or music. It looks at the unsettling desires of two difficult men, and at the ethics of biography. It reflects on growing old, on creativity and inspiration, and on persisting when all passion’s spent: ultimately, on the habit of art. One of the first five episodes also released on terrestrial TV on a 2009 BBC TV series titled "National Theatre Live".
From 2000 to 2007, Teat(r)o Oficina Uzyna Uzona worked on the staging of Euclides da Cunha's epic book, Os Sertões, which describes the 19th Century War of Canudos in the Brazilian "sertão," lead by Antônio Conselheiro. The final result was a pentalogy of plays. This forth play deals with the cause of the war, when a judge from Juazeiro stopped a shipment of wood that was paid for from being delivered for the construction of the New Church of Canudos. Three expeditions were sent by the National Army and defeated, the last one commanded by the famous Colonel Moreira César. The Army faced the humiliation of soldiers deserting and running away, and the impaling of Colonel Tamarindo. He ended up being the main character in a macabre installation on the road to Canudos, created by the Jagunços (thugs from the sertão) and the Mandrakes to intimidate new expeditions.
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.
A presentation of Tennessee Williams' three one-act plays: "Moony's Kid Don't Cry," "The Last of My Solid Gold Watches," and "This Property Is Condemned."
An artist struggles to finish his work while a storyline about a cult plays in his head. As the cult spirals towards a fundamentalism that will destroy the world, the artist decides to destroy his muse to redeem the world.
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.
In rural 1840's Scotland, Gavin Dishart arrives to become the new "little minister" of Thrums's Auld Licht church. He meets a mysterious young gypsy girl in the dens and to his horror Babbie draws him into her escape from the soldiers after she incites a Luddite riot. But unknown to Gavin, Babbie is more than she seems. And they must overcome her secret, the villagers' fears of her, and worst of all, Gavin's devotion to his mother's sensibilities, before they can openly declare their love.
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.
Academy Award® nominee Ralph Fiennes (The English Patient, Schindler’s List, Oedipus at the National Theatre) plays Jack Tanner in this exhilarating reinvention of Shaw’s witty, provocative classic. Jack Tanner, celebrated radical thinker and rich bachelor, seems an unlikely choice as guardian to the alluring heiress, Ann. But she takes it in her assured stride and, despite the love of a poet, she decides to marry and tame this dazzling revolutionary. Tanner, appalled by the whiff of domesticity, is tipped off by his chauffeur and flees to Spain, where he is captured by bandits and meets The Devil. An extraordinary dream-debate, heaven versus hell, ensues. Following in hot pursuit, Ann is there when Tanner awakes, as fierce in her certainty as he is in his. A romantic comedy, an epic fairytale, a fiery philosophical debate, Man and Superman asks fundamental questions about how we live.
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.
The TV-play from the set of Inferno at "Strindbergs Intima Teater", directed by Anna Pettersson and with Siri Hamari in the role of Strindberg, is a lively tale of boundless dreams and frightening fantasies. With the help of magic, music effects and film, Strindberg's portrayal of the creative crisis and the search for new forms. During Strindberg's chaotic time in France and Austria in 1894-1896, his so-called Inferno year, he performed alchemical experiments, tore his hands and suffered hallucinations. In the village where he closes in, he is called the cuckoo. In another country, a little daughter is waiting for her father. This version has been called an "age performance", performing arts that suit all ages. And the finely nuanced and detailed presentation would surely have appealed to the scientist Strindberg.
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.
Lloyd Newson interviewed more than 50 men asking them frank questions, initially about love and sex. One of those men was John.
The popular Arnold Wesker play filmed at the Bristol Old Vic.