Performance

1 9 9 1 – 1 9 9 5 (UK)
27 x 60 minute episodes
1 9 9 7 – 1 9 9 8 (UK)
6 x 60 minute episodes

This anthology series of standalone plays debuted on BBC2 on 5 October 1991.

Opening the season was ‘Absolute Hell’ by Rodney Ackland and starring Judi Dench (pictured) and Bill Nighy.

The black comedy was set in a Soho drinking club (the Vie en Rose) in bomb-blasted London during the weeks leading up to the 1945 election.

It had caused such a stink when it was first seen in London in 1952 under its original title, The Pink Room, that it upset the Lord Chamberlain and was condemned as a “libel on the British people”. Rodney Ackland died shortly after the play’s transmission.

Subsequent presentations in the first series included Chekhov’s ‘Uncle Vanya’ with David Warner and Ian Holm; an adaptation of Roberto Cossa’s Argentinian drama ‘Nona’ with Les Dawson in the title role as the 100-year-old grandmother (pictured below); ‘Old Times’ by Harold Pinter, starring John Malkovich and Miranda Richardson; ‘Top Girls’ with an all-female cast; and ‘The Trials of Oz’, a dramatisation by Richard Neville and Geoffrey Robertson of the famous 1971 trial in which the editors of the British underground magazine were charged with obscenity (starring Hugh Grant as Richard Neville).

The 1992 series of five plays included works by Ibsen and Terence Rattigan with casts including Alec Guinness, John Hurt, Jeremy Irons, Sinead Cusack, Juliet Stevenson, Jane Horrocks, Patricia Hayes, Imelda Staunton, Timothy Spall, Brian Glover and Christopher Eccleston.

Five further plays were aired each year in 1993 (including Ibsen’s classic ‘Hedda Gabler’) and 1994 (including a modern version of Shakespeare’s “problem comedy” ‘Measure For Measure’), with six new episodes in 1995 (including a production of Shakespeare’s ‘Henry IV’. 

Performance returned in March 1997 with six new productions, including ‘Richard II’ (with Fiona Shaw in the title role) and a radical reimagining of Macbeth set on a council estate and retitled accordingly – ‘Macbeth on the Estate’ (pictured below).

 ‘King Lear’ – broadcast on Saturday 21 March 1998 – was the final play aired under the Performance title.

Other actors appearing in the 33 productions included John Gielgud, Edward Fox, Anne Bancroft, Ray Winstone, Billie Whitelaw, Michael Gambon, Penelope Wilton, Bob Hoskins, Leslie Phillips, Lionel Jeffries, Anton Rodgers, Liz Smith, David Bradley, Sue Johnston, Donald Sinden, Kathy Burke, Dora Bryan, Diana Rigg, Phil Daniels, Charles Gray, Kenneth Branagh, Richard E Grant, Nigel Planer, Zoe Wanamaker, Mandy Patinkin, Ed Bishop, Paul Eddington and Colin Firth.

Episodes

Absolute Hell | Uncle Vanya | Nona | Old Times | Top Girls | The Trials of Oz || Tales from Hollywood | A Doll’s House | Roots | After the Dance | Six Characters in Search of an Author || Suddenly Last Summer | The Maitlands | Hedda Gabler | The Entertainer | The Changeling || Message for Posterity | Measure for Measure | The Deep Blue Sea | The Mother | Summer Day’s Dream || Shadow of a Gunman | The Widowing of Mrs Holroyd | Landscape | Bed | Henry IV | After Miss Julie || Company | My Night with Reg | Richard II | Broken Glass | Macbeth on the Estate || King Lear