Theodore Hickman, a hardware salesman, makes by-yearly visits to Harry Hope's 1910-era waterfront bar for his periodical drinking binges. But on this visit he has decided to try to save the bar's patrons from their "lying pipe dreams."
This Pirates of Penzance is primarily a historical document, part of the Broadway Theater Archive television series. It presents, with some inevitable, tiny technical shortcomings, a live 1980 performance in Central Park, not the 1983 movie of the same name that also starred Linda Ronstadt and Kevin Kline. Those who remember that film, which had the benefit of retakes and editing, a lavish production budget, and the spaciousness of a Hollywood studio, may find this video less polished. On its own terms, it is nonetheless thoroughly enjoyable.
A television adaptation of Lillian Hellman's play about the Hubbards, a rich Southern family of greedy, ruthless individuals.
Don Pedro and his men (Teddy Roosevelt Roughriders) have returned from the wars. After Beatrice turns down his proposal, Don Pedro decides to matchmake her with Benedick (her former boyfriend), but she being an independent-minded, bicycle-riding Suffragette type, it's going to take a bit of trickery.
On the Fourth of July holiday in 1906, the Miller family prepares to celebrate in their New England home. Young Richard, 16, is a thoughtful and poetic youth in love with a neighbor girl, Muriel. When Richard's messages of poetry to Muriel upset her prudish father, Muriel is forbidden to see him and forced to write a letter saying she wishes no more to do with him. Richard, devastated, sets out to learn the evil ways of the world and put his broken heart behind him.
An aging Southern belle's preoccupation with her past and her dreams for her children's futures threaten to smother her painfully shy daughter and her aspiring writer son.
A portrait of an African American working-class family, this stage production depicts an elderly grandmother's flashbacks to the affairs she had as a young woman and a hard-working father's current conflict with his two unhappy sons.
This musical adaptation of the Studs Terkel book examines the average worker's viewpoint--showing that he or she is anything but average. Based on a series of interviews with real working people--construction workers, waitresses, firemen, secretaries, and cleaning women, Working is both an exploration of the individuals' occupations and a lament for lost hopes and dreams.
Dramatist Luigi Pirandello's mordant comedy of manners tells the tale of upper-crust Italians Silia Gala and her sneering spouse, Leone, who finds his impassivity tested when he has to duel his wife's frustrated paramour.
Production of Thornton Wilder's Pulitzer-winning play "The Skin of Our Teeth," the story of Mr. and Mrs. Antrobus, their children Henry and Gladys, and their maid Sabina. They are simultaneously a typical American family living in a present-day New Jersey suburb and are also Adam, Eve, Lilith, Cain and a daughter who survive the Ice Age (although their pet dinosaurs do not), the Flood (as in the book of Genesis in the Bible) and War (as in WWII).
The Last of Mrs. Lincoln depicts the final seventeen years of Mary Todd Lincoln's life, following her husband's assassination.
Just before the Salem Witch Trials, an embittered old woman, who has learned witchcraft, teams up with the Devil, and brings a scarecrow to life as part of her diabolical revenge on the judge who was once her lover.
Adaptation of Arthur Miller's play.
Several different accounts of the same incident tell quite different stories about what happened.
Tandy, Merideth and assorted others unexpectedly wake up in a steambath with no easy exit. After spending some time there, it becomes clear that the steambath is a sort of Afterlife, where indifferent souls come to tell their stories to God who happens to be the attendant picking up the towels.
A monologue of a woman talking on the phone with her longterm lover who is about to marry another girl.
James Earl Jones delivers a riveting performance as paranoid patriarch King Lear, an aging monarch who insists that his three daughters prove their love for him, only to learn he's exalted the two who seek to destroy him. This live performance recording of Joseph Papp's New York Shakespeare Festival production deftly envisions the bard's haunting tragedy with a fine supporting cast, including Raul Julia, Paul Sorvino and Rene Auberjonois.
A writer (made to resemble Russian playwright Anton Chekhov) narrates a collection of his stories, all of which are written in the style of Chekhov.
Famed playwright Henrik Ibsen tells the tale of a master builder in the twilight of his career who reaches for love in response to his work's demise.
The tale of a lonely Southern woman's longing for her handsome next-door neighbor. At once tragic and romantic, the story is a reworking of the Williams play "Summer and Smoke," which uses the same characters and setting but in dramatically different ways.
