Play Of The Week (TV Series)
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Play Of The Week (TV Series)
''Play of the Week'' is a 90-minute British television anthology series produced by a variety of companies including ITV Granada, Granada Television, Associated-Rediffusion, Associated TeleVision, ATV and ITV Anglia, Anglia Television. Synopsis From 1955 to 1967 approximately 500 episodes aired on ITV (TV network), ITV. The first production was ''Ten Minute Alibi'', produced by Associated-Rediffusion on 14 May 1956 while the earliest to survive is ''There Was a Young Lady'', broadcast live on 23 July 1956 and simultaneously Kinescope, telerecorded on film. The first production not to be transmitted live was Henrik Ibsen's ''The Wild Duck'' which was also film recorded. The first to be pre-recorded on Quadruplex videotape, videotape was ''Mary Broome'', a Granada production broadcast on 3 September 1958. Subsequently, only one play was transmitted live, Associated-Rediffusion's ''Search Party'' on 26 July 1960. The recording of ''The Liberty Man'', a Granada production broadcast ...
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ITV (TV Network)
ITV is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network. It was launched in 1955 as Independent Television to provide competition to BBC Television (established in 1936). ITV is the oldest commercial network in the UK. Since the passing of the Broadcasting Act 1990, it has been legally known as Channel 3 to distinguish it from the other analogue channels at the time, BBC1, BBC2 and Channel 4. ITV was for four decades a network of separate companies which provided regional television services and also shared programmes between each other to be shown on the entire network. Each franchise was originally owned by a different company. After several mergers, the fifteen regional franchises are now held by two companies: ITV plc, which runs the ITV1 channel, and STV Group, which runs the STV channel. The ITV network is a separate entity from ITV plc, the company that resulted from the merger of Granada plc and Carlton Communications in 2004. ITV plc holds the Channel 3 ...
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The Skin Of Our Teeth
''The Skin of Our Teeth'' is a play by Thornton Wilder that won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. It opened on October 15, 1942, at the Shubert Theatre in New Haven, Connecticut, before moving to the Plymouth Theatre on Broadway on November 18, 1942. It was produced by Michael Myerberg and directed by Elia Kazan with costumes by Mary Percy Schenck. The play is a three-part allegory about the life of mankind, centering on the Antrobus family of the fictional town of Excelsior, New Jersey. The epic comedy-drama is noted as among the most heterodox of classic American comedies — it broke nearly every established theatrical convention. The phrase used as the title comes from the King James Bible, Job 19:20: "My bone cleaveth to my skin and to my flesh, and I am escaped with the skin of my teeth." Overview The main characters of the play are George and Maggie Antrobus (from el, άνθρωπος (anthropos), "human" or "person"), their two children, Henry and Gladys, and Sabina, who ...
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Vivian Matalon
Vivian Matalon (11 October 1929 – 15 August 2018) was a British theatre director. Born in Manchester, Matalon began his career as an actor in a series of forgettable British films, but his greatest success has been as a director of West End, Broadway and regional theatre productions. His West End credits include ''Bus Stop'' with Lee Remick and Keir Dullea, ''I Never Sang for My Father'' with Raymond Massey and ''The Glass Menagerie'' with Anna Massey. He was artistic director for three years at the Hampstead Theatre, where his productions included Clifford Odets' ''Awake and Sing'' and the European premiere of ''Small Craft Warnings'' by Tennessee Williams. Matalon served on the Artistic Advisory Board of New York City's New World's Theatre Project, which makes late 19th and early 20th century Yiddish plays accessible to contemporary audiences in modern English translations. He died from complications of diabetes in August 2018, at the age of 88.
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Peter Brook
Peter Stephen Paul Brook (21 March 1925 – 2 July 2022) was an English theatre and film director. He worked first in England, from 1945 at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre, from 1947 at the Royal Opera House, and from 1962 for the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC). With them, he directed the first English-language production in 1964 of ''Marat/Sade'' by Peter Weiss, which was transferred to Broadway theatre, Broadway in 1965 and won the Tony Award for Best Play, and Brook was named Tony Award for Best Direction of a Play, Best Director. He also directed films such as an iconic version of ''Lord of the Flies (1963 film), Lord of the Flies'' in 1963. He was based in France from the early 1970s on, where he founded an international theatre company, playing in developing countries, in an approach of great simplicity. He was often referred to as "our greatest living theatre director". He won multiple Emmy Awards, a Laurence Olivier Award, the Japanese Praemium Imperiale, the Prix It ...
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Peter Wood (director)
Peter Wood (8 October 1925 – 11 February 2016) was an English theatre director, theatre and film director. Biography Wood was born on 8 October 1925 in Colyton, Devon. His father Frank Wood was a basketmaker and his mother, Lucy Eleanor (Nell), née Meeson was a seamstress. Wood developed his interest in acting while at Taunton School. After school, he spent his National Service with the RAF in Canada and on his return he studied English at Downing College, Cambridge. Wood joined an acting troupe after university, and by 1955 he was running the Oxford Playhouse. The following year, he became resident director at the London Arts Theatre, working alongside Peter Hall (director), Peter Hall During the late 1950s, Wood directed plays at Edinburgh festival and the Old Vic before travelling to Broadway theatre, Broadway to direct ''Five Finger Exercise#Original play, Five Finger Exercise''. He returned to England to direct plays at Old Vic, Globe Theatre and Theatre Royal Haymarket in ...
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Tony Richardson
Cecil Antonio "Tony" Richardson (5 June 1928 – 14 November 1991) was an English theatre and film director and producer whose career spanned five decades. In 1964, he won the Academy Award for Best Director for the film ''Tom Jones (1963 film), Tom Jones''. Early life Richardson was born in Shipley, West Yorkshire, Shipley, West Riding of Yorkshire in 1928, the son of Elsie Evans (Campion) and Clarence Albert Richardson, a chemist. He was head girl and head boy, Head Boy at Ashville College, Harrogate and attended Wadham College, University of Oxford. His Oxford contemporaries included Rupert Murdoch, Margaret Thatcher, Kenneth Tynan, Lindsay Anderson and Gavin Lambert. He had the unprecedented distinction of being the President of both the Oxford University Dramatic Society and the Experimental Theatre Club (the ETC), in addition to being the theatre critic for the university magazine ''Isis magazine, Isis''. Those he cast in his student productions included Shirley William ...
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A Choice Of Kings
"A Choice of Kings" is a television drama film and stage play by John Mortimer. It was first produced in 1966 in the ITV Play of the Week series, directed by John Frankau, starring Michael Craig. Outline The action is set at the court of Edward the Confessor, two years before the Battle of Hastings, and offers an unexpected explanation of the background to the quarrel between Harold Godwinson and William the Conqueror and the Norman invasion of England. Production and screenplay The first production, by Rediffusion, was timed to commemorate the 900th anniversary of the Battle of Hastings, fought on 14 October 1066 and was first broadcast on 11 October, in the week of the original battle.''Liverpool Echo'' (Lancashire, England), Tuesday 11 October 1966, p. 2 John Mortimer's script was published in ''Playbill 3'' (1966), together with other screenplays by Alan Plater, Ray Jenkins, Ronald Duncan, and Alan Gosling. Having been published, the screenplay is sometimes performed on s ...
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Come Back, Little Sheba (play)
''Come Back, Little Sheba'' is a 1950 play by the American dramatist William Inge. The play was Inge's first, written while he was a teacher at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. Plot Set in the Midwestern house of Lola and Doc Delaney, the plot centers on how their life is disrupted by the presence of a boarder, Marie, a college art student who has a keen interest in the young men around her. Middle-aged Lola engages in mild flirtations with the milkman and the mailman. She sees in Marie a younger version of herself and encourages her pursuit of her hometown boyfriend, the wealthy Bruce, but also her classmate, the athletic Turk. Doc, a chiropractor, abandoned a different career in medicine when he married a pregnant Lola, who subsequently lost the baby. A recovering alcoholic, Doc maintains a precarious sobriety. To him, Marie represents youth and opportunities long gone; seeing her with Turk brings out resentments against Lola for ruining his life. Ultimately thes ...
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The Rose Tattoo
''The Rose Tattoo'' is a three-act play written by Tennessee Williams in 1949 and 1950; after its Chicago premiere on December 29, 1950, he made further revisions to the play for its Broadway premiere on February 2, 1951, and its publication by New Directions the following month. A film adaptation was released in 1955. ''The Rose Tattoo'' tells the story of an Italian-American widow in Mississippi who has withdrawn from the world after her husband's death and expects her daughter to do the same. Productions The original Broadway play starred Maureen Stapleton, Phyllis Love, and Eli Wallach. Other original cast members of the 1951 Broadway play included Martin Balsam and Vivian Nathan. The original production of ''The Rose Tattoo'' premiered February 3, 1951, at the Martin Beck Theatre (now known as the Al Hirschfeld Theatre) and concluded October 27, 1951, with a total of 306 performances. It was produced by Cheryl Crawford, written by Tennessee Williams; incidental music by D ...
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The Lark (play)
''The Lark'' () is a 1952 play about Joan of Arc by the French playwright Jean Anouilh. It was presented on Broadway in English in 1955, starring Julie Harris as Joan and Boris Karloff as Pierre Cauchon. It was produced by Kermit Bloomgarden. Lillian Hellman made the English adaptation and Leonard Bernstein composed the incidental music. The two stars of the play reprised their roles in a 1957 television production of the play, as part of the anthology series '' Hallmark Hall of Fame''. A different television adaptation aired in 1958 in Australia. There is another English translation by Christopher Fry. Plot summary The play covers the trial, condemnation, and execution of Joan, but has a highly unusual ending. Joan remembers important events in her life as she is being questioned, and is subsequently condemned to death. However, Cauchon realizes, just as Joan is burning at the stake, that in her judges' hurry to condemn her, they have not allowed her to re-live the coronation of ...
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I Remember Mama (play)
''I Remember Mama'' is a play by John Van Druten based on Kathryn Forbes' novel ''Mama's Bank Account'', which was loosely based on her childhood. It is a study of family life centered on a Norwegian immigrant family in San Francisco early in the 20th century. The play premiered on Broadway on October 19, 1944 at the Music Box Theatre in New York City, where it ran for 713 performances; it was produced by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II. The cast included Mady Christians, Oscar Homolka, and Joan Tetzel. Marlon Brando played a minor role, making his Broadway debut as Nels. Synopsis The play revolves around the life of a loving Norwegian immigrant family, the Hansons, living on Steiner Street in San Francisco soon after the turn of the 20th century. Told through the nostalgic eye of Katrin, one of three daughters, it is the story of a working-class family trying to live the American dream. Papa Hanson is a blue-collar worker; he and Mama attempt to raise their four chi ...
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The Birthday Party (play)
''The Birthday Party'' (1957) is the first full-length play by Harold Pinter, first published in London by Encore Publishing in 1959. It is one of his best-known and most frequently performed plays. In the setting of a rundown seaside boarding house, a little birthday party is turned into a nightmare when two sinister strangers arrive unexpectedly. The play has been classified as a comedy of menace, characterised by Pinteresque elements such as ambiguous identity, confusions of time and place, and dark political symbolism. Pinter began writing ''The Birthday Party'' in the summer of 1957 while touring in ''Doctor in the House''. He later said: "I remember writing the big interrogation scene in a dressing room in Leicester." Characters * Petey, a man in his sixties * Meg, a woman in her sixties * Stanley, a man in his late thirties * Lulu, a girl in her early twenties * Goldberg, a man in his fifties * McCann, a man of thirty (''The Birthday Party'', Grove Press ed., 8) Sum ...
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