Great Performances

Seasons

1971

8

TV-G

Filmed and televised versions of theater productions, such as plays, musicals, operas, ballets, and concerts from around the world.

Clips & Trailers

Clip #1

Clip #2

Episode List

S1 • E1

Episode #1.0

S1 • E1

The Rimers of Eldritch

A backwater Iowa town is in ethical turmoil after the sexual assult of a teenage girl and murder trial.

S1 • E2

Episode #1.2

S1 • E3

Episode #1.3

Long-nosed Cyrano de Begerac helps an army officer woo Roxanne, the woman he loves.

S1 • E4

Antigone

With fierce originality, this powerful adaptation of the Sophocles tragedy presents a world of honor, treachery and fateful consequences. Acclaimed actress Genevieve Bujold skillfully combines elements of zealotry and idealism in her affecting portrait of Antigone. Jean Anouilh's retelling of "Antigone" stages the inescapably wrenching central confrontation between Antigone and Creon by presenting Bujold and Fritz Weaver seated at a long, executive-suite table--a hallmark of Anouilh's play. The New York Times critic, John J. O'Connor, lauded this "Antigone" as "well acted, well directed and beautifully staged."

S1 • E5

King Lear

King Lear, old and tired, divides his kingdom among his daughters, giving great importance to their protestations of love for him. When Cordelia, youngest and most honest, refuses to idly flatter the old man in return for favor, he banishes her and turns for support to his remaining daughters. But Goneril and Regan have no love for him and instead plot to take all his power from him. In a parallel, Lear's loyal courtier Gloucester favors his illegitimate son Edmund after being told lies about his faithful son Edgar. Madness and tragedy befall both ill-starred fathers.

S1 • E6

In Fashion

A musical comedy based on a play by the master of the bedroom farce, French playwright Georges Feydeau. Set in 1908, the action revolvrd around a series of comic love affairs.

S1 • E7

Paradise Lost

S1 • E8

Episode #1.8

S1 • E9

Episode #1.9

S1 • E10

Feasting with Panthers

Oscar Wilde's five years at hard labor in Reading Gaol where he was imprisoned for being a sodomite.

S1 • E11

A Memory of Two Mondays

A group of workers earn their livings in a Brooklyn automobile parts warehouse during the Great Depression. Most are filled with hopelessness; some are alcoholics. Kenneth, however, is a young man yearning for a college education.

S1 • E12

Bach's Mass in B Minor

Johann Sebastian Bach's masterwork is performed by the Bach Orchestra and Choir of Munich. The Mass in B Minor said Leopold Stokowski, "has cosmic vastness of expression and consciousness at certain moments there is in the music profound mystical intensity that could only have come from the spirit of a man who was moved to the uttermost of his being." Conductor Karl Richter discusses Bach and the Mass. Soloists include contralto Herta Topper and soprano Gundula Janowitz.

S1 • E17

The Widowing of Mrs. Holroyd

Mr. Holroyd is an alcoholic, abusive miner in pre-WWI England who terrorizes his family. Mrs. Holroyd plans to run away with her would-be lover when Mr. Holroyd dies in a mining accident, leaving the family torn with guilt over their hatred of the dead man. Geraldine Page and Rex Robins star.

S1 • E18

Hogan's Goat

A young Irish ward boss has a chance to be elected mayor, but the disgraced current mayor makes sure the candidate's wife learns about his affair with a just-deceased rich girl.