Broadway Theatre Archive

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.

Set in ancient Japan, Rashomon follows the aftermath of a bandit’s attack on a warrior and his wife, as the bandit, the wife, the husband, and a woodcutter each offer different versions of what happened. Directed for "Play of the Week" by Sidney Lumet, the production uses the story’s shifting testimonies to examine truth, self-image, violence, and moral uncertainty.

Anton Chekhov's play "The Seagull" is brought to life in this acclaimed 1975 production directed by John Desmond. Seeking to reform the theater, Konstantin (Frank Langella) has written an experimental play with the lead to be acted by his beloved, Nina (Blythe Danner). He arranges the first performance to take place at a country estate, but the presence of his self-absorbed mother (Lee Grant) and her novelist lover disrupts the production.

An aging Southern Belle complicates life for her ambitious son and crippled daughter because of her own warped views of what life should be.

In this rousing satire a native upstate New York clerk comes to 1920s Manhattan with dreams of making in big on Tin Pan Alley.

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.

As a young child, Frederic had been apprenticed to a pirate by mistake when he should have been apprenticed to a pilot. Now, having reached his 21st year, Frederic's indentures are at last over and he happily leaves the service of the pirates. When Frederic meets the beautiful Mabel, one of the many daughters (or wards in Chancery) of Major-General Stanley, they fall in love and decide to marry. However, complications arise when the pirates decide to marry the rest of the Major-General's daughters, themselves - and Frederic's birthdate turns out to be not all it seems. Filmed live from Central Park prior to the production's transition to Broadway.

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.

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).

A television adaptation of Lillian Hellman's play about the Hubbards, a rich Southern family of greedy, ruthless individuals.

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

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.

Real-life couple Eli Wallach and Anne Jackson star in this 1971 television adaptation of Murray Schisgal's moving play, in which married law student Paul Cunningham takes a job as a typist for an ad agency, where he meets lonely spinster Sylvia. Through a series of flashbacks and flash-forwards, the story of their relationship and developing romance unfolds. Emmy Award winner Glenn Jordan directs this volume from the Broadway Theater Archive.

This 1977 drama by Phillip Hayes Dean, deals with the sad division between what a man hopes for and what he achieves. In the title role, Dick Anthony Williams portrays a naïve, ambitious, recklessly optimistic man who is not understood by those closest to him and who finds himself in difficulty because of his unrealistic hopes.

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.

A Danish prince and university student avenges his father's murder by his uncle, who stole the crown and married his mother.

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

In a sun-dappled garden in provincial Russia in 1905, some factory owners and their wives discuss the unrest among the workers. Rather than submit to a strike, they decide to close down the factory. When an owner is slain in a scuffle with a workman, the ensuing investigation uncovers the socialist fervor that is sweeping the countryside.

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.

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.