The Play of the Week
Season 2
This syndicated anthology series staged a different play every week covering all genres, dramas, comedies, musicals, fantasies, mysteries, et al, utilizing some of the best talent appearing on Broadway.
Where to Watch Season 2
31 Episodes
- Legend of LoversE3
Legend of LoversWhen they meet in a railroad station and fall in love and escape by themselves to a shabby hotel room, it is the rest of the world that seems unreal. Their lovers' avowals are their center of the universe. Everything that goes on around them seems mean and contrived. In the Greek legend, Eurydice dies; Orpheus persuades death to restore her to him. But death extracts one condition: Orpheus must never look at her. M. Anouilh has restated the legend in terms of a romantic street musician and the soubrette of a provincial theatre troupe. - Seven Times MondayE6
Seven Times MondayThe problems of a factory worker who dreams of becoming a ""cop,"" of replacing the drudgery of the machine shop with the thrill of riding along on a motorcycle. But there are family responsibilities to meet, and the problems of prejudice to be dealt with - which they are, in a most heart-warming and honest way. - The Iceman Cometh (1)E8
The Iceman Cometh (1)The spotlight is on the failed lives, empty hopes, and perpetual pipe dreams of an assortment of down-and-out denizens of a seedy saloon, set in New York in 1912. Their sad, but complacent existences are rattled when Hickey arrives for his annual bender a changed man - forswearing alcohol and preaching a deliverance from ""the lie of the pipe dream."" - A Clearing in the WoodsE14
A Clearing in the WoodsA young woman seeking asylum from an urban world where she is in crisis, caught between madness and reason. In her search for solace in the woods, she is propelled into a world far more disorienting - where time is turned upside down and the phantoms of her past meet the realities of her present in a storm of illusion and desire. - The Potting ShedE15
The Potting ShedThe story concerns the son of a famous atheist who seeks to uncover a childhood mystery in his past. He eventually discovers that he committed suicide in the eponymous potting shed at the age of 14, but was revived when his uncle, a priest, entered into a strange bargain with God. - Four by TennesseeE19
Four by TennesseeThe Four Tennessee Williams plays are: ""I Rise in Flame, Cried the Phoenix"" (1959) based on the last few days and death of DH Lawrence. ""Hello from Bertha."" (1954) A disturbed drunk prostitute named Bertha wallows around while her two housemates try in vain to help her. ""The Lady of Larkspur Lotion."" (1949) Sedlachek, the owner of a fleabag hotel, who wants to evict her deadbeat tenant. She is a faded Southern belle who, despite being reduced to prostitution, tries gamely to maintain a facade of gentility. What she refers to as lotion is actually hooch. Her castle in the air is a plantation in Brazil, and the man of her dreams a ""rubber king""; but the knight who rides to her rescue turns out to be the alcoholic blocked writer who lives down the hall. ""The Purification"" (1959) - No Exit / The Indifferent LoverE22
No Exit / The Indifferent Lover(1) ""No Exit"" with Colleen Dewhurst, Dane Clark, Diana Hyland Three people are stuck in hell without the convenience of a torturer on whom to focus their fear and hatred. Naturally being resourceful humans, they find infinite ways to torment each other. Best line Sartre wrote is ""Hell is other people"". (2) ""The Indifferent Lover"" with Miriam Hopkins - The Wooden DishE25
The Wooden DishClara and the father-in-law she has been trying to dislodge ever since she married who is a tough, asthmatic old wreck combining all the pride and cunning of his age with the simplicity of a baby. His son, Glenn, is tossed helplessly from one loyalty to another, and Clara has grown desperate enough for anything, even an attempted love affair with another man, anything to release her from this burden. When Pop finally gives up the fight to remain in his son's home, it is left to his granddaughter, Susan, to see with the compassion that only youth can feel for age, the true tragedy of his going. - Waiting for GodotE27
Waiting for GodotTwo tramps are waiting by a sickly looking tree for the arrival of M. Godot. They quarrel, make up, contemplate suicide, try to sleep, eat a carrot and gnaw on some chicken bones. Two other characters appear, a master and a slave, who perform a grotesque scene in the middle of the play. A young boy arrives to say that M. Godot will not come today, but that he will come tomorrow. He does not come and the two tramps resume their vigil by the tree, which between the first and second day has sprouted a few leaves, the only symbol of a possible order in a thoroughly alienated world. - In A GardenE28
In A GardenThe story of Adrian Terry, a wealthy, fortyish playwright who has decided to retire from writing plays. His jealous hack-writer friend Roger Compton insists that Terry keep on writing, telling him he is a dramatist to the soles of his shoes. When Terry demurs, Compton attempts to provoke him with an idea: he states that every man's wife is another man's mistress. Compton then tells Terry that he has information that Terry's young wife Lissa had a dalliance when she was a debutante with dashing Ivy Leaguer Norrie Bliss, in a garden in Katonah. - All Summer LongE31
All Summer LongPortrait of a complacent Midwestern family. Blustering father, bumbling mother, brainless daughter, whose river bank house is threatended by erosion. Two brothers work together to make retaining wall to save their home form the rising river. They fail, the house crumbles, and the family has to flee for its life.
