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6 November 1993 · 5 episodes
6 November 1993
Mrs Venable's grief at the loss of her beloved poet son Sebastian turns to rage against her niece Catharine, his last companion and witness of his gruesome death. Determined to erase the memory of Sebastian's loss, she tries to persuade her pet doctor to perform a lobotomy on Catharine.
13 November 1993
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. Performance presents the first production for 60 years of the witty and tragic family drama by Ronald Mackenzie.
3. Hedda Gabler
27 November 1993
After acclaimed productions in Dublin and London's West End, Fiona Shaw re-creates the titular role for Performance with a new supporting cast including Stephen Rea. Nervous and agitated rather than haughty and frigid, Shaw's Hedda breaks with tradition. "Hedda is often called strong-willed," she comments, "but where is the evidence in the play for this? To me, Hedda is terribly ordinary."
4 December 1993
Michael Gambon plays Archie Rice, the role made famous on stage (1957) and on film (1960) by his illustrious first mentor, Laurence Olivier. The central character in John Osborne's drama is a drunken, lecherous, egotistical vaudevillian whose act is on the downward slope.
11 December 1993
Thomas Middleton and William Rowley's tragedy has been called "the most convincing picture of uninhibited sexual desire in Elizabethan drama". In this version, edited by Michael Hastings, much of the original sub-plot has been cut to concentrate on a dark story of lust and revenge between two ambiguous, guilt-ridden individuals. Bob Hoskins stars as De Flores, the "ominous ill-fac'd fellow" led by his desire for the imperious virgin Beatrice Joanna (Elizabeth McGovern) into murder and adultery.