
Performance (1991)
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Simon Curtis — Producer
Episodes 27
A Doll's House
Years ago, Nora Helmer committed a forgery in order to save the life of her authoritarian husband Torvald. Now she is being blackmailed, and lives in fear of her husband finding out.
Read MoreAfter the Dance
We don't have an overview translated in English. Help us expand our database by adding one.
Six Characters in Search of an Author
Six fictional characters in an unwritten play appear to a theatrical company and demand that the company act out the characters' tragic story.
Read MoreHedda Gabler
Hedda Gabler is a beautiful woman married to the solid and respectable academic George Tesman. Then an old flame, the dreamer Eilert Lovborg, turns up on the scene with tragic results.
Read MoreThe Changeling
Just days before her wedding, Beatrice-Joanna has a chance encounter with Alsemero, and realizes that she has met her one true love. To marry the man she loves, she persuades the love-struck henchman De Flores to murder her fiancé, but does not anticipate the tragic consequences of her actions.
Read MoreHenry IV
Henry Bolingbroke has now been crowned King of England, but faces a rebellion headed by the embittered Earl of Northumberland and his son (nicknamed 'Hotspur'). Henry's son Hal, the Prince of Wales, has thrown over life at court in favour of heavy drinking and petty theft in the company of a debauched elderly knight, Sir John Falstaff. Hal must extricate himself from some legal problems, regain his father's good opinions and help suppress the uprising.
Read MoreAfter Miss Julie
After Miss Julie is an adaptation of the 1888 play Miss Julie by August Strindberg. The narrative takes place on the night of July 26 1945, after the British Labour Party's landslide defeat of the Conservatives (led by Winston Churchill). The atmosphere is lively, and the action takes place on a property owned by Miss Julie's rich father.
Read MoreUncle Vanya
When Vanya's brother-in-law declares his intention to sell the family's house, polite facades begin to crumble and long repressed feelings start to emerge with devastating consequences.
Read MoreAbsolute Hell
Black comedy set in Soho, London, right after WW2. Half of the fun is seeing a slew of very familiar faces kick up their heels as gay men, lesbians, party-girls, drunks, and drag queens.
Read MoreThe Trials of Oz
Dramatization of the famous 1971 trial in which the editors of the British underground magazine "Oz" were charged with obscenity.
Read MoreTales From Hollywood
A slightly ironical description of the colony of German artists in Los Angeles, who had to leave their country during the Nazi-regime. A young playwriter (von Horvath) joins them and finds out, that there are gaps between the artistical attitudes and the real live behavior of authors like Thomas or Heinrich Mann, Lion Feuchtwanger or Bertold Brecht.
Read MoreRoots
Beatie returns to her family home in Norfolk, having been "educated" in cultural and political matters by Ronnie, the boyfriend she lived with in London. Through trying to pass on the things she's learnt to her uninterested family, she discovers her own voice and views—which are no longer just an echo of Ronnie's.
Read MoreSuddenly Last Summer
We don't have an overview translated in English. Help us expand our database by adding one.
The Maitlands
In the secluded coastal resort of Betworthy, the Maitland family has fallen on hard times and the eldest son Roger, a schoolmaster, is forced to give a young boy after-school tuition in order to pay for his jet-setting wife Dorothy's trip to the French Riviera. His mother, Mrs. Maitland, puts her hope in a legacy from her brother while their live-in cousin Phyllis plans to escape poverty and the tedium of Betworthy by accepting a marriage proposal from Major Luddington. Everything changes, however, as the younger Maitland brother, Jack, returns home for a visit and Phyllis falls in love with him. Jack, who left the family years ago to seek his fortune in London, is now a rich and successful actor, a career choice of which his family never approved, which, in his opinion, gives him the perfect excuse to treat them just as badly as he wishes. Further trouble comes along as Joan, an old friend of Phyllis's, suddenly pays a visit to the house and falls in love with Roger.
Read MoreThe Entertainer
The play uses the metaphor of the dying music hall tradition, specifically fictional music hall star Archie Rice, to comment on the moribund state of the British Empire in the 1950s.
Read MoreMessage For Posterity
A Parliamentary committee decides to commission a portrait as a memorial to an ageing Conservative, wartime ex-Prime Minister, Sir David Browning. Bizarrely, they choose anarchic, anti-establishment and equally ageing artist James Player, who appears to stand for the very opposite values and positions to his prospective sitter. During sittings the two men find many opportunities to score political and social points off each. Screened with an with an introduction by Brian Walden, a contemporary of writer Dennis Potter at Oxford and an old Oxford political sparring partner.
Read MoreMeasure for Measure
Modern dress version of Shakespeare's "problem comedy" emphasizing the darker elements of the play and eliminating most of the humor, as Claudio is dragged to the police station on charges of fornication, and given a rectal exam in front of a window.
Read MoreThe Deep Blue Sea
A woman unhappy in her passionless marriage leaves her husband for a younger and more ardent lover.
Read MoreSummer Day's Dream
In 1975, after a nuclear war, the nations have combined to set up a World Government. An old man who lives quietly in the country finds his peace threatened by a visit from three World Government figures.
Read MoreThe Mother
Paddy Chayefsky's 1954 play set in the Bronx tells the story of a recently widowed 66-year-old seeks a job after 40 years if being a homemaker.
Read MoreShadow of a Gunman
The first part of Sean O'Casey's Dublin Trilogy. Set in 1920, as the Irish War of Independence rages, "Shadow of a Gunman" is the story of two young men, Donald Davoren and Seamus Shields, who share a flat in Dublin.
Read MoreThe Widowing of Mrs. Holroyd
Mrs. Holroyd is married to a loutish miner. When a gentlemanly neighbour makes romantic advances to her, she wishes her husband dead. Sooner than she hoped, her wish comes true.
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