SCREEN PLAYS
Moss Hart
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
‘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
From Edward Albee to Tennessee Williams: American drama on the British small screen
One of the things I’m working on at the moment is turning my Arthur Miller blog posts into an essay for the Screen Plays collection Theatre Plays on British Television which John Wyver and I are editing for publication with Manchester University Press. It strikes me that, for context, it would be very good to get a better idea of how other American plays have been presented on British television in the twentieth century. Continue reading
SCREEN PLAYS 