Cornelius "Con" Melody is an Irish tavern keeper in New England who lives in reverence of his former days as a nobleman and decorated officer in the British army during the Napoleonic wars. Impoverished now, he struts about in his uniform and plots to make money by manipulating the love of his daughter for the son of a wealthy manufacturer. His daughter sees through his façade and his chicanery and begins to plot for herself.
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 writer (made to resemble Russian playwright Anton Chekhov) narrates a collection of his stories, all of which are written in the style of Chekhov.
This Pirates of Penzance is primarily a historical document, part of the Broadway Theater Archive television series.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 dramatization of the 1865 war-crimes trial of Henry Wirz, commandant of the notorious Confederate POW camp at Andersonville, Georgia.
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.
Curley Delafield, a young arms merchant, is determined to discover the secret behind the disappearance of his sister Sarah.
A scrub-woman attempts to rescue a dolphin who will talk to no one but her from a research laboratory.
Adaptation of Arthur Miller's play.
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.
Donald Moffat stars in Moliere's classic comedy about lovable scoundrel Tartuffe, who befriends the wealthy Orgon and then attempts to seduce both his new friend's wife and daughter in this TV presentation from the Broadway Theatre Archive. Tartuffe pretends to be a pious man whose faith convinces Orgon and his family to succumb to his influence, but he's undone when his womanizing ways make it clear that his piety is a charade.
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.
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.
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.
The Last of Mrs. Lincoln depicts the final seventeen years of Mary Todd Lincoln's life, following her husband's assassination.
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.
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.
Henry Flipper is the first black West Point graduate. Assigned to serve at Fort Davis in Texas, Flipper becomes the object of a conspiracy by his fellow cadets to rid the base of its only black graduate.
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).
Several different accounts of the same incident tell quite different stories about what happened.
