SCREEN PLAYS
Amanda Wrigley
The Screen Plays Database … now LIVE!
We are delighted to announce that the first phase of Screen Plays: The Theatre Plays on British Television Database is now available on the website of the British Universities Film and Video Council (BUFVC). This resource is one of the major outputs of the AHRC-funded research project Screen Plays: Theatre Plays on British Television which ran from 2011 to 2015. Continue reading
‘Greek tragedy on the small screen’ is revived in Birmingham!
Just as we have brought to a close our fourth and final season of screenings at BFI Southbank, marking the end of a wonderful four years of collaboration on the topics of Greek tragedy (2012), Jacobean tragedy (2013), Edwardian drama (2014) and American playwrights (2015), we are absolutely delighted to announce that part of our very first season is about to be revived at the Library of Birmingham under the guardianship of Dr Elena Theodorakopoulos, Senior Lecturer in Classics at the University of Birmingham. Continue reading
Once in a Lifetime (BBC-WNET, 1988)
The sixth and final screening in our Classics on TV: Great American Playwrights season at BFI Southbank this month is of the fast-paced and sparkling comedy Once in a Lifetime by Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman. First staged to acclaim on Broadway in 1930, this play satirizes Hollywood at the point in 1927 when talking pictures were on the cusp of becoming a global commercial phenomenon. This 1988 BBC-WNET production features splendid comic performances from Kristoffer Tabori (Jerry), Niall Buggy (George) and David Suchet (Glogauer), but Zoë Wanamaker’s more nuanced performance as May brings depth to this riotous comedy of blunders. Book your ticket on the BFI website for the 6.10pm screening on Thursday 29 January 2015! Continue reading
Rocket to the Moon (Channel 4-PBS, 1986)
The fifth, and penultimate, screening in our Classics on TV: Great American Playwrights season at BFI Southbank this month is of the 1986 Channel 4-PBS production of Clifford Odets’ play Rocket to the Moon, directed by John Jacobs (who is also credited with the 1958 BBC production of Strange Interlude from earlier in the season!) and featuring strong performances from Judy Davis and John Malkovich, as well as Connie Booth and Eli Wallach. Continue reading
Arthur Miller on the small screen 3: The Crucible
Arthur Miller’s (1915-2005) American tragedies have not only proved to be extremely popular on both British professional and amateur stages for more than half a century but they have also enjoyed a longstanding place at the heart of English literature curricula in schools. It is not surprising, therefore, to discover that at least twelve productions of his plays have been transmitted on British television networks over a forty-year period from 1957 to 1997. This third in a series of four posts considers the three extant productions of The Crucible transmitted in 1959 (Granada), 1968 (Rediffusion) and 1981 (BBC), with a special focus on the last of the three for which a viewing copy exists in the archives. Continue reading
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (Granada for ITV, 1976)
The third screening in our Classics on TV: Great American Playwrights season at BFI Southbank this month is of the 1976 Granada for ITV production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Tennessee Williams’ 1955 Pulitzer-winning play of a Deep South family in crisis. Robert Moore directs this sumptuous production, starring Laurence Olivier as Big Daddy, Robert Wagner as his alcoholic son Brick and Natalie Wood as Brick’s dissatisfied wife. Continue reading
Mrs Patterson (BBC, 1956)
We are really excited about the fourth Screen Plays season at BFI Southbank in January 2015. Taking Great American Playwrights as its theme, the season presents six rarely-seen television productions of theatre plays by Tennessee Williams, Eugene O’Neill, Arthur Miller and Clifford Odets and others, each of which will be blogged and discussed over the coming month. I begin by considering the BBC’s 1956 Sunday Night Theatre production of Mrs Patterson, a play about race and adolescence in the Deep South by the African-American painter-playwright Charles Sebree and Greer Johnson. This rarity opens the BFI season at 6.00pm on Wednesday 7 January 2015, and the 75-minute production will be followed by a panel discussion and Q&A (details to be announced). Continue reading
Dylan Thomas’ Under Milk Wood (BBC, 1957)
Yesterday came welcome news of the publication of the online edition of the latest issue of Critical Studies in Television, a themed collection of essays titled ‘The Liveliest Medium’: Television’s Aesthetic Relationships with Other Arts which promises to enrich significantly current debates on television aesthetics. It contains three essays that explore the aesthetics of theatre plays on television: John Wyver’s ‘Serjeant Musgrave’s Dance and the Politics of Possibility in Two Television Adaptations’, Billy Smart’s ‘Three Different Cherry Orchards, Three Different Worlds: Chekhov at the BBC, 1962-81′ and my own ‘Dylan Thomas’ Under Milk Wood, “a Play for Voices” on Radio, Stage and Television’. In this blog post I share a taster of my essay, in the hope of directing readers to the volume as a whole. Continue reading
‘Classics on TV: Great American Playwrights’, a BFI Southbank season
Screen Plays is thrilled to announce details of our fourth season of screenings at BFI Southbank in January 2015. Following on from our successful seasons of Greek plays, Jacobean tragedy and Edwardian plays, this season will highlight rarely seen television productions of theatre plays by major American playwrights. Among those whose works will be shown are Tennessee Williams, Eugene O’Neill, Arthur Miller and Clifford Odets, but the season also includes some more surprising choices as well. Continue reading
‘An outside broadcast from the last century’: the Gaslight Theatre melodramas (BBC, 1965)
At 7.50pm on 31 July 1965, the Saturday-evening audience for BBC2 was treated to an hour of melodrama . . . melodrama, that is, as it had been played on the 19th-century stage. The production offered that evening, titled Maria Marten; or, The Murder in the Old Red Barn, was the first in a curious series of six melodramas, all with a theatrical pedigree, transmitted in a prime-time weekly viewing slot under the banner Gaslight Theatre. The series was the brainchild of the actor and theatre manager, Alec Clunes, and the television producer Bryan Sears, who were supported by a special ‘resident company’ of actors who took part across many of the productions – indeed, Ronnie Barker not only starred in all of the plays but also had a hand in cutting the scripts down to an appropriate size for the hour-long slot. Continue reading
SCREEN PLAYS 