Showing results for "Britain" in Performing Arts

Making sense of the British Empire's legacy... through the stories of people who lived through it.

Former Prime Minister John Major takes a remarkable journey into his own unconventional family past to tell the richly colourful story of the British music hall. Music hall was one of the glories of Victorian England. Sentimental, vulgar, class-conscious, but always patriotic and on the side of the underdog, it held a mirror to the audiences’ hopes and fears - and sometimes the general absurdity of life. Vast, smoke-filled auditoriums were packed night after night in nearly every town and city in Britain.

Stand-up comedy in Britain is booming, audiences are flocking to comedy clubs in the thousands! Recorded at the legendary Camden Jongleurs club in London, this compilation features 10 of the hottest comics on the UK circuit, performing blistering routines to ecstatic audiences. With Ed Byrne, Rhona Cameron, Sean Meo, Omid Djalili, Junior Simpson, Adam Bloom, Mike Gunn, Marcus Brigstocke, Andy Parsons, and Simon Evans.

Lenny Bruce was a prominent stand-up comedian, social critic, and satirist who heralded the free-speech movement and helped to push culture towards open and honest expression. He was repeatedly arrested for obscenity. Here he performs at the Gate of Horn in Chicago, December, 1962 - a performance that concludes with his arrest.