Michael Birkett

King Lear

King Lear, old and tired, divides his kingdom among his daughters, giving great importance to their protestations of love for him. When Cordelia, youngest and most honest, refuses to idly flatter the old man in return for favor, he banishes her and turns for support to his remaining daughters. But Goneril and Regan have no love for him and instead plot to take all his power from him. In a parallel, Lear's loyal courtier Gloucester favors his illegitimate son Edmund after being told lies about his faithful son Edgar. Madness and tragedy befall both ill-starred fathers.

A Midsummer Night's Dream

Peter Hall's film adaptation of Shakespeare's comedy, filmed in and around an English country house and starring actors from the Royal Shakespeare Company.

Marat/Sade

In Charenton Asylum, the Marquis de Sade directs a play about Jean Paul Marat's death, using the patients as actors. Based on 'The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade', a 1963 play by Peter Weiss.

The Caretaker

Aston, a quiet, reserved man, lives alone in a top-floor cluttered room of a small abandoned house in a poor London district. He befriends and takes in Mac Davies, an old derelict who has been fired from a menial job in a café. In time Aston offers him a job as caretaker of the house. Aston's brother, Mick - a taunting, quasi-sadist - harasses the derelict when his brother is away, countermanding his orders...