Performance - Episode Guide

Set in a club in Soho, the play is a funny and desolating account of life in bomb-blasted London in the weeks before the 1945 election.

The retired professor whose return, with his beautiful young wife, to the country estate left by his deceased first wife sets in motion a typically Chekhovian comic tragedy of lost hopes, stifled passions and blighted ideals

Nona, "the old one", is the 100-year-old matriarch of a city family, whose gluttony reduces her kinfolk to beggary, prostitution and death.

Twenty years after they lived together in London, Anna meets up with Kate, who is now married to Deeley. The visit stirs vivid memories in all three, sometimes conflicting, sometimes complementary. But with the memories comes a growing awareness of the gulfs between them.

Marlene celebrates her new position as managing director of the Top Girls Appointment Agency by giving a dinner party for five oddly assorted women from centuries past. But Marlene's own past will throw a question mark over her Top Girls success. The author describes her play as "a celebration of the extraordinary achievements of women".

Dramatization of the famous 1971 trial in which the editors of the British underground magazine "Oz" were charged with obscenity. Based on the trial transcripts by Geoffrey Robertson QC, then a solicitor working for the defence counsel, John Mortimer. 

Among the residents of Los Angeles during the 40s were Thomas and Heinrich Mann, Bertolt Brecht and, according to this play, the Austro-Hungarian dramatist Odon Von Horvath, our guide to the sun-soaked boulevards and the bizarre cultural collisions of wartime Hollywood.

Nora, tired of being patronised and casually discounted by her husband, rebels against him and by doing so discovers a whole new personality within herself.

Beatie returns to her family home in Norfolk, having been "educated" in cultural and political matters by Ronnie, the boyfriend she lived with in London. Through trying to pass on the things she's learnt to her uninterested family, she discovers her own voice and views - which are no longer just an echo of Ronnie's.

David and Joan's life has been one continuous party, but their marriage is loveless. Suddenly a young girl appears in their world and announces that she's in love with David and wants to change his life for ever.

The great iron door of the studio swings open. In the light stands a family. The father walks up to the director and says, "Excuse me, we are looking for an author." The family carry with them a great personal tragedy of shame and despair, and have come to the studio to find somebody who can describe their experiences and explain what they've done to each other.

It is early summer in the secluded seaside village of Betworthy. But there is a strained atmosphere in the once-prosperous Maitland household, because the family has fallen on hard times.

Hedda is so exasperated with her acceptance of a narrow bourgeois marriage that she makes a drastic decision about her life.

Archie Rice, a drunken, lecherous, egotistical vaudevillian whose act is on the downward slope.

De Flores, the "ominous ill-fac'd fellow" is led by his desire for the imperious virgin Beatrice Joanna into murder and adultery.

Sir David Browning has twice been Prime Minister. On his retirement Parliament decides to honour him with a portrait painted by the famous artist James Player.

The plot concerns corruption in high places and a chaste girl asked to sacrifice her honour to save her brother's life.

Hester is rescued by a neighbour after attempting suicide in the flat she shares with her younger lover, ex-RAF pilot Freddie Page.

After a nuclear war, the nations have combined to set up a World Government. An old man who lives quietly in the country finds his peace threatened by a visit from three World Government figures.

A dreaming poet is mistaken by a romantic young girl for an IRA gunman on the run.

D.H. Lawrence's early play exploring life in a mining community in 1914.

Harold Pinter 's delicate portrait of the secret life of lovers Beth and Duff.

Jim Cartwright 's drama portrays the bittersweet memories of seven very old people who all share the same bed.

Director John Caird 's adaptation of Shakespeare's two-part work - telling the story of a young man's elevation from immature prince to responsible king - explores timeless themes against the brutal backdrop of medieval England.

It's 1945 and the Labour Party has won the General Election. Miss Julie, the upper-class daughter of a Labour MP, sets out to seduce her father's chauffeur, John, even though he is unofficially engaged to Christine, who works in the kitchen.

After disinheriting the youngest of his three daughters because she refuses to pander to his desire for flattery, King Lear suffers the torments of rage, humiliation and madness at the hands of his two eldest daughters before arriving at a painful self-knowledge.