Broadway Theatre Archive

William Saroyan's Pulitzer Prize-winning play revolves around the denizens of a San Francisco bar in 1939. Lonely, lovelorn, weary or cynical, the characters drift in and out of the bar and each other's lives, giving voice to Saroyan's philosophies as they randomly comment about the impending world war, the beauty of art, and traditional notions of good and evil. At least one of the relationships stands a chance of enduring: a brawny innocent named Tom is falling in love with a vulnerable young prostitute named Kitty. Saroyan himself is heard reciting the play's prologue.

This Pirates of Penzance is primarily a historical document, part of the Broadway Theater Archive television series.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.

San Francisco's prize-winning American Conservatory Theater's rowdy commedia dell'arte production incorporates slapstick, pratfall and earthy humor into William Shakespeare's comedy about the two unmarried daughters of a wealthy Italian merchant. While daughter Bianca is genteel and popular, daughter Kate is foul-tempered and strong-willed. No one dares to marry Kate, until Petruchio arrives in Padua and tries his hand at courtship.

A scrub-woman attempts to rescue a dolphin who will talk to no one but her from a research laboratory.

Dustin Hoffman stars in this television adaptation of Ivan Turgenev's tale about Dmitri Zoditch, a simple manuscript reader at a publishing house whose grand dreams don't square with his dead-end job and miserable apartment. When he's assigned to read the diary of a nobleman, he finds bitter parallels between his own pathetic existence and the wasted life described in the journal. Michael Tolan and Charlotte Rae co-star.

A rehearsal is disrupted when six figures mysteriously appear on the stage, claiming to be fictional characters from an unfinished play searching for an author to tell their tragic story. An adaptation of the classic Luigi Pirandello play, updated to take place in a 1970s television studio.

This lively, spirit-lifting musical celebrates the sheer joy -- and survival -- of black music, song and poetry since the days of America's Civil War. With utter grace and ease, the gifted eight-member singing ensemble glides from gospel to disco and from slave-quarter sermons to contemporary black poetry.

Adapted from Arthur Miller's play, film focuses on a group of Frenchmen who are detained at Vichy, the capital of France while under Nazi occupation, and "investigated" under suspicion of secretly being Jewish.

Meryl Streep stars as Alice in this production of Elizabeth Swados' musical, which was adapted from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll. Based on the acclaimed New York Shakespeare Festival production by Joseph Papp, Alice at the Palace follows Alice's surreal adventures with The Mad Hatter, The March Hare, The Queen of Hearts, and The Cheshire Cat, among many others.

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.

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 dramatization of the 1865 war-crimes trial of Henry Wirz, commandant of the notorious Confederate POW camp at Andersonville, Georgia.

Adaptation of Arthur Miller's play.

From the elaborate Broadway revival of the 1932 Eva Le Gallienne/Florida Friebus production comes a whimsical retelling of the Lewis Carroll classic.

This drama tells the story of Irish insurgents and the captured British soldiers whom they are assigned to guard. While confined to a remote farmhouse the foursome enjoy card playing, jig dancing, and a great deal of amiable bickering. Throughout the conviviality, however, Barney Callahan is haunted by the knowledge that reprisals will be in order if the Irish harm their British captives.

The Bergers, a blue-collar Jewish family living in an overstuffed tenement and undone by the Depression, struggle through hard times and dream of a better future in this 1972 production of Clifford Odets' pungent play. Personalities and politics clash as Odets' mélange of characters try to survive on pennies a day. Walter Matthau plays cynical World War I amputee Moe Axelrod, and Leo Fuchs portrays the family's iron-willed leftist grandfather.

The Last of Mrs. Lincoln depicts the final seventeen years of Mary Todd Lincoln's life, following her husband's assassination.

An advertising man, emotionally estranged from his wife and those around him, has seduced and then fired and discarded his secretary. She pursues him and forces him to confront the squalor of his life.

Is a sensitive and mysterious poet really an IRA gunman in hiding? Set in a Dublin tenement in the 1920s, this was the first part of Sean O'Casey's celebrated "Dublin Trilogy." Equal parts comedy and tragedy, this classic play is brilliantly performed by a stellar cast.

Set in a Norwegian hamlet, an idealistic physician discovers that the town's hot springs are contaminated. But with the community relying on the spa for tourist dollars, his warning to the powers-that-be falls on deaf ears.