Broadway Theatre Archive titles - recommendations wanted (1 Viewer)

[PatrickL]

Does anyone here, with an interest in these dvds (mostly of plays that were taped for telecast), have an opinion about which ones stand above the rest in terms of content? I'm finding that after the initial pressings some of the titles have become scarce and I want to make sure I pick up the better titles.
I think there have been about 60 of these so far; of the ones I own I enjoyed A Moon for the Misbegotten and The Sea Gull the most, with Hogan's Goat at the other end of the spectrum.
Immediately, I can afford to pick up only ten from the following list of twenty, so any comment would be greatly appreciated.
Ah! Wilderness
All Over
Awake and Sing
Eccentricities of a Nightingale
Fifth of July
For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide
Hamlet (Kevin Kline)
Home
The Human Voice
The Last of Mrs. Lincoln
Paradise Lost
The Pirates of Penzance
The Rimers of Eldritch
The Royal Family
The Sorrows of Gin
Steambath
The Taming of the Shrew (Marc Singer)
Ten Blocks on the Camino Real
The Time of Your Life
The Typists

 

[DeeF]

Of these Broadway tapings, I own

Much Ado About Nothing
June Moon (with Susan Sarandon and Stephen Sondheim)
The Royal Family (must have!)
Eccentricities of a Nightingale
The Fifth of July
The Pirates of Penzance (the show itself, not a movie made of it)
Steambath
Home
Uncommon Women and Others

 

[RafaelB]

Funny that- I just picked up Pirates of Penzance over the weekend. I took a peek at it and it's very obviously taken from a really old video master, but I think it's the best we're going to get until Universal releases the movie version and it's the only document of the Papp stage production that I know of.

Rafael

 

[Jefferson]

The Marc Singer TAMING OF THE SHREW is the
best I've seen.
Highly recommended.
THE ROYAL FAMILY is one of the rare
chances to see the legendary stage
actresses, Eva Le Gallienne....hmmm...
did i spell her name right?
DEATH OF A SALESMAN
was one of those releases too, that is
a must have.

 

[NeilEdwards]

A MUST buy is "The Skin of Our Teeth". This was done by the Globe Theatre in San Diego and features a stellar cast including Blair Brown, Harold Gould, Sada Thompson and Rue McClanahan.

I have many of these titles. All are from Kultur and they seem to be committed to preserving and releasing these "Great Performances" from PBS among others.

Sadly, I haven't gotten around to watching most of them, but will eventually fit them into my schedule.

 

[PatrickL]

I just picked up Pirates of Penzance over the weekend. I took a peek at it and it's very obviously taken from a really old video master

I'm guessing that it's probably comparable to the James Earl Jones King Lear which was also taped outdoors in Central Park? If that's the case, I can live with it.
Neil, thanks for the thumbs-up for The Skin of Our Teeth; I wasn't even considering it, but will pick it up now.

 

[Aaron Silverman]

What's the cast of the Penzance DVD?

 

[PatrickL]

Aaron, the cast is headed by Rex Smith, Kevin Kline and Linda Ronstadt.

 

[RaulR]

I don't have any recommendations, but I just wanted to thank Patrick for posting this. I never knew these DVDs existed! I've ordered "Pirates," and I'm sure that's just the beginning for me.
Great theater to watch!
Painful wallet!

 

[Aaron Silverman]

I never knew about these either, but I LOVE the CD of that cast!
There's $20 out the door, you happy bastards.

 

[PatrickL]

I just wanted to thank Patrick for posting this.

My pleasure, and I'd like to thank everyone who responded. These discs are very rarely reviewed at any of the sites I visit.
I trimmed my list down to ten and included The Pirates of Penzance but now I'm having a lot of trouble finding that one. Amazon listed it as in stock last week, but now says ominously "we'll tell you in a few weeks if we have trouble obtaining it." Just missed it at my local Borders too, and a couple of my favorite etailers don't appear to carry it at all :frowning:

 

[Coressel]

A MUST buy is "The Skin of Our Teeth". This was done by the Globe Theatre in San Diego and features a stellar cast including Blair Brown, Harold Gould, Sada Thompson and Rue McClanahan.

Absolutely! I remember when this was aired LIVE in 1983. What a hoot.

 

[RafaelB]

If you're having trouble ordering from Amazon or other e-tailers, you can always order it (for MSRP) directly at http://www.kultur.com.
Hope this helps.
Rafael

 

[PatrickL]

Thanks Rafael!
I don't know why I didn't realize that before; I had thought that broadwayarchive.com was the official site for the series, and the links there would always direct me to etailers.
In any event I didn't have to go MSRP after all; someone kindly pointed out to me that deepdiscountdvd carries some of these titles, including Pirates, for less than 14 bucks.

 

[MarkBourne]

Back when these were distributed by Image, I reviewed some Broadway Theatre Archive discs for dvdjournal.com. They were:
Alice in Wonderland
Antigone
Fifth of July
The Iceman Cometh
King Lear
The Royal Family
The Seagull
The Time of Your Life
Working
My Master's is in theater, so as a reviewer my sensibilities were in the productions more than the tech details of the DVDs, but as a reviewer I tried to hit all relevant points within the space and format allotted. Hell, I was just thrilled to see that they existed at all.
Unfortunately, Kultur is not as generous with its screeners as Image is, so I haven't done any since they acquired the series -- though I'd certainly love to do more. It is a splendid and growing collection, well worth investigating. Thanks for opening this thread and spreading the word.
You can find links to my reviews of them on this page -- http://www.sff.net/people/mbourne/dvdjournal.htm -- about half-way down and clearly marked.
THE ICEMAN COMETH and KING LEAR are must-haves, absolutely.
--Mark Bourne

 

[PatrickL]

Mark, thanks for the links to your excellent, well-informed reviews. They were a pleasure to read and I hope that you get to review more discs in the series.
I wanted to follow up in this thread after watching The Pirates of Penzance disc this morning. So sad to say, especially since it will be for some people an introduction to the series, that it is easily the worst looking disc I have ever seen. A few other titles I've seen in this series have had some problems due to old video elements (Antigone comes to mind, with its overall softness and bleeding colors) but nothing that compares to Pirates, which looks like a dub of a dub of a dub.

 

[Enrique B Chamorro]

I just got The Pirates of Penzance and the only thing
that keeps me from throwing the disc out is my love
of the music. The video source is so poor it almost
makes the picture unwatchable. The stage lighting would
brighten and fade as people enter and leave and the
video camera would carry a ghost of the light flair
and wash out the picture.
A sad presentation of a fine show.
I am a fan of The Taming of the Shrew and have
had my eye on the John Cleese version. see;
http://www.documentary-video.com/dis...em.cfm?vid=828
I remember the video tape being just so-so,
I am now afraid that the Cleese DVD will result in an
almost unwatchable film. How is the Marc Singer version?
It seems sad that none of the BBC/Time-Life or Broadway
DVD's have subtitles, a very important item for me
when it comes to Shakespeare on DVD.
(I have the upbeat Richard Burton version on DVD.)

 

[Jefferson]

I'm in it for specific performances, too...so if
I can actually see Lee J Cobb and Mildred
Dunnock in their original DEATH OF A SALESMAN roles,
that is well worth the disc flaws to me.

 

[PatrickL]

Jefferson, I too can be forgiving and accept the understandable limitations of the source material on some of these discs in order to enjoy the performances. But it's a long long way from accepting the soft, slightly faded look of something like the Death of a Salesman disc to putting up with the horrible, nearly unwatchable video of Pirates. Believe me, I've never seen anything released on dvd in such terrible shape, it's truly far below substandard.
Enrique, I now have the Marc Singer Taming of the Shrew. I can't comment yet on the quality of the performance, but I did take a peek at it for video quality and it's in line with the usual releases in this series. In other words, it's more than fine. Thanks for mentioning the BBC version, which I'll be sure to check out. I wanted to mention to you that if you want to brush up your Shakespeare, the James Earl Jones King Lear is sensational, just as Mark said. The lack of subtitles is sad, I agree, but this version is well articulated and superbly performed. And there is nothing to fear as far as the video quality goes on that one.