Sunday-Night Play Season 1, Episode 18: Twentieth Century Theatre: The Vortex

A Walk in the Desert

The Unplayed Part

The Ruffians

Twentieth Century Theatre: Man and Superman

Twentieth Century Theatre: The White Guard

It is November 1918 and the scene is the city of Kiev in the Ukraine, lately garrisoned by the German Army of Occupation but now threatened by the approach of a large well-equipped army of Cossacks. There's no ammunition and food is desperately short in the city. But still attempts are made to raise an army of citizens to repel the invaders. Describing the impact of the collapse of the Tsarist Empire on a family of officers, this play centres on Alexei Turbin, Colonel of the White Guard, responsible for defending Kiev, and on his beautiful sister Helena, deserted by her husband and in love with a young lieutenant, Leonid Schervinsky.

Twentieth Century Theatre: Our Betters

Twentieth Century Theatre: MacAdam and Eve

Brian Rix Presents: Is Your Honeymoon Really Necessary?

Twentieth Century Theatre: The Conquering Hero

Twentieth Century Theatre: Journey's End

Twentieth Century Theatre: The Fanatics

Twentieth Century Theatre: Young Woodley

Twentieth Century Theatre: I Have Been Here Before

Twentieth Century Theatre: The Price of Freedom

Twentieth Century Theatre: Glorious Morning

Twentieth Century Theatre: The Queen Came By

Twentieth Century Theatre: Love on the Dole

Twentieth Century Theatre: Judgment Day

Twentieth Century Theatre: Aren't We All

Twentieth Century Theatre: The Elder Statesman

Twentieth Century Theatre: The Assassin

Twentieth Century Theatre: Doctor in the House

Twentieth Century Theatre: Mr. Gillie

Twentieth Century Theatre: The Insect Play

Twentieth Century Theatre: Musical Chairs

Playhouse 90: A Town Has Turned to Dust

A weakling sheriff is unable to prevent a lynching. Can he redeem himself by preventing a second one?

Summer Theatre: June Evening

Summer Theatre: You're a Long Time Dead

Summer Theatre: My Flesh, My Blood

Summer Theatre: The Critical Point

Dr. Gage, involved in cryogenics, volunteers to be the first frozen man after murdering his wife. Dr. Mortimer discovers who killed his wife and ponders whether he should play judge and jury by switching Dr. Gage's freezing machine off?

Summer Theatre: A Dream of Treason

Lambert, a government official, is required to leak a secret document - which may have serious consequences.

Summer Theatre: The Devil's General

General Harras, a hero of the First World War, finds himself increasingly at odds with the new Germany of Adolf Hitler.

Summer Theatre: The Liberators

Summer Theatre: The Small Victory

Summer Theatre: Death of a Guest

Brian Rix Presents: Reluctant Heroes

Summer Theatre: An English Summer

A Walk in the Desert

The Unplayed Part

The Ruffians

Pay Day

Affair of State

Philip is much older than his wife, who is, he discovers, having an affair with his friend George. When he introduces George to a young woman, he has an ulterior motive.

The Barretts of Wimpole Street

Elizabeth Barrett's tyrannical father has forbidden any of his family to marry. Nevertheless, Elizabeth falls in love with the poet Robert Browning.

The Judge and His Hangman

Inspector Barlach is ruthless in pursuit of an arrest, and doesn't seem to care if anyone else gets hurt along the way.

Centenary Year

Somewhere for the Night

She Stoops to Conquer

Hardcastle, a man of substance, looks forward to acquainting his daughter with his old pal's son with a view to marriage. But thanks to playboy Lumpkin, he's mistaken by his prospective son-in-law Marlow for an innkeeper, his daughter for the local barmaid. The good news is, while Marlow can barely speak to a woman of quality he's a charmer with those of a different stamp.

Cross of Iron

Brian Rix Presents #14: Flat Spin

The Test

Pressure mounts on a group of scientists as they urgently prepare to test a new top secret weapon.

Hello Ragtime

The Big Noise

What Every Woman Knows

Maggie Wylie isn't very beautiful. She isn't even very young any more. But fortunately there is more to Maggie than meets the eye.

Faraway Places

Kindly, mild mannered clerk Arthur Bruce dreams of traveling to distant lands and reads books about faraway places.

A Clean Kill

The Hasty Heart

It's 1945, Burma, the day the war is over! For many this means they've survived and will be going home. But not for everyone. A Scottish soldier, Corporal Lachlan "Lachie" MacLachlan is the victim of a wound to the lower back on this day. He's moved to a M.A.S.H. unit and undergoes surgery. As time goes by he begins to recover and watches, in dismay as soldiers pack up and head for home.

Wet Fish

The Winslow Boy

The Winslow family return from church to their house in South Kensington on a summer morning in 1912 not knowing how their lives will be altered by their son, Ronnie, who has been expelled from Naval College for stealing a five shilling postal order.

Brian Rix presents: Basinful of the Briny

That Lady

A Call on Kuprin: Part 1

After the manned satellite, the armed satellite. Kuprin, the Soviet scientist, is working on a warhead for the Chelovyek. But Laye-Parker, M.P., and Smith, a Lobby Correspondent at the House of Commons, remember him at Cambridge before the war as an Anglophile married to an English woman. Can they, by a personal approach, persuade him to return to this country?

A Call on Kuprin: Part 2

Laye-Parker, M.P., and Smith, a Lobby Correspondent, have reached Moscow in their search for Kuprin, a Soviet rocket expert whom they knew at Cambridge and whom they hope to persuade to return to England. Now Laye-Parker has been arrested by the M.V.D. on unspecified charges, and Smith, a reluctant partner in the enterprise, must carry on the search alone.

Home at Seven

Home at seven as usual after just another Monday at the office - or that is what Mr. Preston thought. But in fact it is Tuesday and he has no recollection of the past twenty-four hours. It soon becomes vital to fill this gap in his memory.

Brian Rix presents: Wolf's Clothing

Marriage Lines

A comedy of marriage, set in the secure partnership of two mature and worldly people, examines what happens when an envious free-lance tries to rock the boat.

Scene of the Accident

When a prominent Q.C. is knocked down and killed by a car, the driver's Insurance Company is faced with paying out on a very substantial claim. Briefed to investigate possible grounds for disputing liability, Sam Holford unearths a delicate and intriguing situation.

Charley's Aunt

I'm Charley's Aunt from Brazil - where the nuts come from.

Brian Rix presents: A Fair Cop

Fury in Petticoats

It is 1837 and we are in the home of the Rev. William Dill, the vicar of a small parish in England. Life there is peaceful and leisurely until one day the vicar welcomes into his household a native girl brought from Tierra del Fuego by a Mr. Charles Darwin....

The Wrong Side of the Park

Old Mick Mack

A Reason for Staying

A group of Eastern European emigres, now living in England, still hope that they will one day return to their home-land in authority. But one of them, a general, has a reason for staying.....

The Mather Story

A serious accusation by a famous artist about the work of another gives John Ramsay a chance to 'get something into the paper' and perhaps to keep his job on the Sunday Herald. But rapidly the story becomes a challenge-to his skill, and to his responsibility.

An Inspector Calls

Spring, 1912 - for the wealthy a time of good living, gaiety, and a belief in the unshakability of the status quo. Mr. and Mrs. Birling are celebrating the engagement of their daughter Sheila to Gerald Croft, heir to a title; it is the pinnacle of Mr. Birling's successful rise in society.....

The Intervener

Jeremy Penlove is a London solicitor and a confirmed bachelor. His life is placid and uncomplicated until, one fine summer's day, a new client, Lily Forrester, walks into his office to turn his world upside down.

The Final Result

John Horner's father, mother, and sister are waiting to hear the result of his degree examination. He is the only one who is not surprised: it is what he expected it to be. It is this result, and the action John takes as a consequence, which reveals, nakedly, the conflict within this family group.

A Kind of Strength

Two men, both trapped in the world of commerce, struggle for freedom. In facing the truth about themselves, the decisions they have to make need a rare kind of strength.

Off Centre

Joe Hunter is a scientist living two lives: one as he sees himself, and the other as the world, sees him. The story spans the years from 1917, when he was a young pilot in the Royal Flying Corps, to the present day - when the man and his ideas come into headlong collision.

A Woman Comes Home

Home has many meanings; a refuge from strain, the start of 'growing up'; the source of compassion and understanding. When these are lost there is desolation, but if they are fought for, no matter with what human frailty, life may grow again out of a new wisdom.

Venus Brown

For Jack Brown, his wife Venus is a goddess in more than name. But she is not a goddess, she is a human being, and it is dangerous to worship human beings.

Nearer to Heaven

The Chopping Block

Looking for Garrow

American business woman Clarissa comes to England seeking one J.S. Garrow - author of an alarmingly frank new novel. But it looks as though her teenage daughter has already found Garrow - and he is franker and more alarming than his book!

A Subject of Scandal and Concern

In 1842, a rebel in Cheltenham and Gloucester imprisoned for his beliefs and for the right to express them.

The Wind and the Sun

Ruth and Lewis Miller's marriage is almost at breaking point. The result upon their two children of the tension created by this situation is revealed in the play as an important question in modern life. The play is not regarded as suitable for viewing by children.

The Squeeze

Should Big Tom, a colliery face repairer, confronted by the onset of middle age, continue with his work at the risk of his life, or settle for something safer at the risk of his self-respect?

The Nightwalkers

A young British student wandering through France today becomes involved with remnants of a former French Resistance group.

The Assassins

A quiet evening at home for a normal fairly prosperous middle-class family is suddenly disrupted by the arrival of two strangers - two men with a mission, fanatical and ruthless, prepared to kill if necessary; but these men are not criminals-they would be described by some as patriots.

The Song of a March Hare

Crumble is convinced that he was born for success in business. All he needs is a chance to prove it, and this comes with an unexpected legacy.

A Time to Fight

Housewife Ellen Manders had no reason to suspect that this evening was going to be any different from any other until her husband arrived home late with his shoes and brief-case covered in mud.

Tuppence in the Gods