Alice's Playhouse
In Alice's Playhouse you will discover an exceptional collection of feature films adapted from some of the most celebrated plays ever written. Often featuring towering performances, outstanding direction and exceptional writing, this collection is a superb archive of contemporary drama masterfully transferred to the silver screen.
Filmizations of The Bard's work may be scrolled via the 'Shakespeare' sub-feature in green on the left, along with other notable playwrights who have been adapted for celluloid.
For adaptations of novels and short stories, check the 'Special Interest' link and click on 'Based on...'
Right: Marlon Brando and Vivien Leigh relax during the filming of Tennessee Williams' masterpiece, 'A Streetcar Named Desire'.
Bernard Shaw Collection: Vol. 2 (1972)
Director: William Slater, Cedric Messina, Ronald Smedley
Starring: Maggie Smith, Tom Baker, Charles Gray, James Villiers, Helen Mirren, Prunella Sc...
Bernard Shaw sits among the great playwrights of the English language; this collection brings together five of his classic plays as adapted by the BBC... Read more
Mrs Warren's Profession / You Never Can Tell (1972)
Director: James Cellan Jones
Starring: Coral Browne, Penelope Wilton, Robert Powell, Richard Pearson, James Grout, Dere...
Written in 1893, though not performed until 1902 due to government censorship 'Mrs Warren's Profession' scandalized Victorian England. This BBC produ... Read more
Play It Again, Sam (1972)
7.7/10
Director: Herbert Ross
Starring: Woody Allen, Diane Keaton, Tony Roberts, Jerry Lacy
Woody Allen's first film with Diane Keaton. Allen plays a fanatical movie buff with an outrageous recurring hallucination, Humphrey Bogart offering ti... Read more
Sleuth (1972)
8/10
Director: Joseph L Mankiewicz
Starring: Laurence Olivier, Michael Caine
Mystery tour-de-force based on Anthony Shaffer's play starring Laurence Olivier as an eccentric writer of mystery novels coercing his wife's lover Mic... Read more
Home (1971)
6.6/10
Director: Lindsay Anderson
Starring: John Gielgud, Ralph Richardson, Dandy Nichols, Mona Washbourne, Warren Clarke
Two irrepressible legends of the British stage (Sir John Gielgud and Sir Ralph Richardson) lend elegance, wit and pathos in this made for television a... Read more
The Trojan Women (1971)
7.1/10
Director: Michael Cacoyannis
Starring: Katharine Hepburn, Vanessa Redgrave, Genevieve Bujold, Irene Papas, Patrick Mage...
Featuring an ensemble cast "one could never hope to see on stage" (Pauline Kael, New Yorker), this screen adaptation of the Euripides tragedy sees a f... Read more
Under Milk Wood (1971)
6.3/10
Director: Andrew Sinclair
Starring: Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor, Peter O'Toole
This film version of a wonderfully evocative radio play weaves a magical tapestry of words around the lives and dreams of the inhabitants of the tiny... Read more
The Boys in the Band (1970)
7.7/10
Director: William Friedkin
Starring: Cliff Gorman, Kenneth Nelson, Leonard Frey, Reuben Greene, Laurence Luckinbill,...
One of the first American films to openly deal with homosexuality. 'The Boys in the Band', based on Mart Crowley's enormously successful Broadway play... Read more
King Lear (Scofield) (1970)
8.3/10
Director: Peter Brook
Starring: Paul Scofield, Irene Worth, Jack MacGowran
To see Paul Scofield as Lear is to see nobility turn to pauperdom, pride to a frenzy of madness, manhood to senility, in the course of a single and un... Read more
The Thames Shakespeare Collection (1970)
Director: Kenneth Branagh, Joan Kemp-Welch, Philip Casson
Starring: Ian McKellen, Judi Dench, Marie Kean, Ian McDiarmid, Patrick Magee, Ray Smith, W...
From royal family struggles and star-crossed lovers to a shipwreck romance and witches' prophecies, this acclaimed collection features the four of Sha... Read more