Broadway Theatre Archive

An aging Southern Belle makes life horrible for her ambitious son and crippled daughter because of her dreams of what life should be.

Adaptation of Arthur Miller's play.

The powerful tales of seven diverse African-American women are woven together in this 1982 performance of Ntozake Shange's Obie Award-winning landmark play. A breakthrough portrayal of black women's experiences in America, the story combines music, poetry and dance to celebrate their unique culture while painting a poignant portrait of their terrible struggles.

Theodore Hickman, a hardware salesman, makes by-yearly visits to Harry Hope's 1910-era waterfront bar for his periodical drinking binges. But on this visit he has decided to try to save the bar's patrons from their "lying pipe dreams."

Meryl Streep stars as Alice in this production of Elizabeth Swados' musical, which was adapted from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll. Based on the acclaimed New York Shakespeare Festival production by Joseph Papp, Alice at the Palace follows Alice's surreal adventures with The Mad Hatter, The March Hare, The Queen of Hearts, and The Cheshire Cat, among many others.

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

Just before the Salem Witch Trials, an embittered old woman, who has learned witchcraft, teams up with the Devil, and brings a scarecrow to life as part of her diabolical revenge on the judge who was once her lover.

Dustin Hoffman stars in this television adaptation of Ivan Turgenev's tale about Dmitri Zoditch, a simple manuscript reader at a publishing house whose grand dreams don't square with his dead-end job and miserable apartment. When he's assigned to read the diary of a nobleman, he finds bitter parallels between his own pathetic existence and the wasted life described in the journal. Michael Tolan and Charlotte Rae co-star.

Drawn from the diaries and letters of noted feminists, such as women's suffrage founder Elizabeth Cady Stanton and labor organizer "Mother" Mary Jones, this unique production paints a compelling portrait of the women's liberation movement.

San Francisco's prize-winning American Conservatory Theater's rowdy commedia dell'arte production incorporates slapstick, pratfall and earthy humor into William Shakespeare's comedy about the two unmarried daughters of a wealthy Italian merchant. While daughter Bianca is genteel and popular, daughter Kate is foul-tempered and strong-willed. No one dares to marry Kate, until Petruchio arrives in Padua and tries his hand at courtship.

This Pirates of Penzance is primarily a historical document, part of the Broadway Theater Archive television series. It presents, with some inevitable, tiny technical shortcomings, a live 1980 performance in Central Park, not the 1983 movie of the same name that also starred Linda Ronstadt and Kevin Kline. Those who remember that film, which had the benefit of retakes and editing, a lavish production budget, and the spaciousness of a Hollywood studio, may find this video less polished. On its own terms, it is nonetheless thoroughly enjoyable.

A rehearsal is disrupted when six figures mysteriously appear on the stage, claiming to be fictional characters from an unfinished play searching for an author to tell their tragic story. An adaptation of the classic Luigi Pirandello play, updated to take place in a 1970s television studio.

A 1974 PBS production of Jean Anouilh's 1944 play "Antigone" adapted from the original Sophocles.

William Saroyan's Pulitzer Prize-winning play revolves around the denizens of a San Francisco bar in 1939. Lonely, lovelorn, weary or cynical, the characters drift in and out of the bar and each other's lives, giving voice to Saroyan's philosophies as they randomly comment about the impending world war, the beauty of art, and traditional notions of good and evil. At least one of the relationships stands a chance of enduring: a brawny innocent named Tom is falling in love with a vulnerable young prostitute named Kitty. Saroyan himself is heard reciting the play's prologue.

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.

Dramatist Luigi Pirandello's mordant comedy of manners tells the tale of upper-crust Italians Silia Gala and her sneering spouse, Leone, who finds his impassivity tested when he has to duel his wife's frustrated paramour.

A scrub-woman attempts to rescue a dolphin who will talk to no one but her from a research laboratory.

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.

Set in Richmond, Virginia in October 1864, tells the story of a Union spy working to seize control of the telegraph office.