Noël Coward's Present Laughter

Nov 3, 2017

2h 14m

★ 6.4

Overview

A self-obsessed actor in the midst of a mid-life crisis juggles a fawning ingenue, a crazed playwright, his ex-wife, and the personal lives of his friends. Originally broadcast as an episode of the PBS series "Great Performances" (season 45, episode 4).

Genres

Drama

Production Companies

BroadwayHD

Thirteen

Noël Coward's Present Laughter Trailers

Cast

Garry Essendine

Kevin Kline

Liz Essendine

Kate Burton

Monica Reed

Kristine Nielsen

Joanna Lyppiatt

Cobie Smulders

Roland Maule

Bhavesh Patel

Morris Dixon

Reg Rogers

Fred

Matt Bittner

Miss Erikson

Ellen Harvey

Henry Lyppiatt

Peter Francis James

Daphne Stillington

Tedra Millan

Lady Saltburn

Sandra Shipley

Academy Award® nominee Ralph Fiennes (The English Patient, Schindler’s List, Oedipus at the National Theatre) plays Jack Tanner in this exhilarating reinvention of Shaw’s witty, provocative classic. Jack Tanner, celebrated radical thinker and rich bachelor, seems an unlikely choice as guardian to the alluring heiress, Ann. But she takes it in her assured stride and, despite the love of a poet, she decides to marry and tame this dazzling revolutionary. Tanner, appalled by the whiff of domesticity, is tipped off by his chauffeur and flees to Spain, where he is captured by bandits and meets The Devil. An extraordinary dream-debate, heaven versus hell, ensues. Following in hot pursuit, Ann is there when Tanner awakes, as fierce in her certainty as he is in his. A romantic comedy, an epic fairytale, a fiery philosophical debate, Man and Superman asks fundamental questions about how we live.

6.4

Anonymous

Oct 21, 2011

Set against the backdrop of the succession of Queen Elizabeth I, and the Essex Rebellion against her, the story advances the theory that it was in fact Edward De Vere, Earl of Oxford who penned Shakespeare's plays.

7.5

Shimmer

Oct 1, 1993

The solo actor in Shimmer tells the story by becoming each character in turn. The play takes place in 1956, in a harsh Midwestern juvenile detention center, where two boys befriend each other.

7.6

National Theatre Live: Barber Shop Chronicles

Jan 9, 2018

For generations, African men have gathered in barber shops to discuss the world. These are places where the banter can be barbed and the truth is always telling. Follow along as we leap from a barber shop in Peckham to Johannesburg, Harare, Kampala, Lagos and Accra over the course of a single day.

4.5

Convicted

Nov 1, 1931

A criminologist investigates the murder of a Broadway producer on an ocean liner.

6.6

L'Amour fou

Jan 15, 1969

A troubled marriage is tested by the couple's involvement in a theatrical production of Racine’s Andromaque.

6.1

The Penthouse

Oct 3, 1967

A married man and his young mistress suffer sadistic torture when Tom, Dick and Harry invade their penthouse.

7.6

Century of Birthing

Nov 17, 2011

An artist struggles to finish his work while a storyline about a cult plays in his head. As the cult spirals towards a fundamentalism that will destroy the world, the artist decides to destroy his muse to redeem the world.

7.4

Who Am I This Time?

Feb 2, 1982

Harry is a shy hardware store employee. But whenever he takes a part in a local amateur theater production, he becomes the part completely--while on stage. Helene is new in town, a lonely itinerant telephone company employee. On a whim, she auditions for and gets the part of Stella to Harry's Stanley when the theater group performs A Streetcar Named Desire. Before anyone realizes the growing affection between Helene and Stanley, she falls deeply in love with the sexy brute, not knowing what the real man is like.

8.0

The Victim Of The House Of The Pride

Jan 1, 1976

A Kuwaiti comedy play that revolves around Saif, a loyal and diligent worker whom experiences difficulties at home which lead to disastrous results.

0.0

Good Morning, Kuwait

Jan 1, 1995

A Kuwaiti comedy play starring Abdulrahman Al-'Aqel, Intisar Al-Sharaah, Mohammed Al-'Ujaimi, Abdulnasser Darweesh.

0.0

The Guardian is the Thief

Oct 11, 2007

A Kuwaiti comedy play starring Taariq Al-'Ali, Khalid Al-Beraiki, Shihaab Hajiah and others

10.0

Al-Manakh Knights

Feb 23, 1983

The first Gulf economic play centered on an issue that affected members of Kuwaiti society, which sparked widespread controversy between Kuwaiti society and the Gulf community in general, and the issue was the "Al Manakh Market" crisis in 1982, which ended in losses exceeding $ 22 billion. Where the story tells about the second oil boom of the Gulf states at the end of the seventies and the beginning of the eighties of the twentieth century AD where the price of oil increased continuously until the Gulf countries recorded large financial surpluses, so the money poured into the stock market significantly until it opened a stock trading office in a semi-parallel office and was named a market "Al Manakh" in which money flowed greatly from almost all segments of Kuwaiti society and even foreign residents and some individuals from the Gulf states and increased frantic speculation and increased buying and selling for the future until it reached astronomical numbers.

6.5

Audience

Jan 1, 1990

A recording of the legendary production “Audience“ from the Prague Drama Club with Josef Abrhám and Pavel Landovský. In 1975, Václav Havel worked as a labourer in the brewery in Trutnov; he could do nothing else. And it was here that he made perhaps his most successful one-act play, Audience, about the writer Ferdinand Vanek, who is invited by his superior to offer him a deal - a promotion to warehouse keeper, but in return has to inform on himself for StB reports.

7.0

Timon of Athens

Apr 16, 1981

Timon loves to give parties and objects to friends, but when he cannot pay his creditors, his "friends" refuse to help him, and he becomes a misanthropic hermit.

1.0

National Theatre Live: Everyman

Jul 16, 2015

Everyman is successful, popular and riding high when Death comes calling. He is forced to abandon the life he has built and embark on a last, frantic search to recruit a friend, anyone, to speak in his defence. But Death is close behind, and time is running out. One of the great primal, spiritual myths, Everyman asks whether it is only in death that we can understand our lives. A cornerstone of English drama since the 15th century, it now explodes onto the stage in a startling production with words by Carol Ann Duffy, Poet Laureate, and movement by Javier De Frutos.

6.0

What Where

Sep 8, 2000

There are five survivors in a futuristic library. Bam is their supreme dictator, and has the others interrogated and tortured, believing them to have said where. What Bam means is unclear, but he distrusts all.

0.0

Hedda Gabler

Jan 1, 1978

Jan Decorte's second feature film is an adaptation of the play Hedda Gabler by Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. Decorte moved the locus of action of Ibsen's realistic play from 1890 to 1950, twenty-eight years earlier than when the film was shot. The story begins when Hedda returns home from an overly long honeymoon with her newly wed but colourless husband Tesman. She is pregnant and will be courted by the writer Eljert Lövbor, an old lover who is about to break through with an exceptional novel of autobiographical quality [Avila].

0.0

Montserrat

Mar 2, 1971

The story is set during the South American Wars of Independence. Simón Bolivar, the liberator, has escaped from Spanish custody with the aid of an idealistic Spanish officer, Captain Montserrat. The Spanish commander, Colonel Izquierdo ('left' in Spanish), threatens Montserrat with torture to find out where Bolivar can be recaptured.