Movies Similar to Noël Coward's Present Laughter

The Baby of Mâcon(1993)

Set halfway through the 17th century, a church play is performed for the benefit of the young aristocrat Cosimo. In the play, a grotesque old woman gives birth to a beautiful baby boy. The child's older sister is quick to exploit the situation, selling blessings from the baby, and even claiming she's the true mother by virgin birth. However, when she attempts to seduce the bishop's son, the Church exacts a terrible revenge.

6.9

The Rainmaker(1982)

Traveling rainmaker Starbuck arrives at the drought-ridden Curry place, promising rain for the farm and perhaps a romance for 'spinster sister' Lizzie.

6.7

Phoebe in Wonderland(2008)

The fantastical tale of a little girl who won't - or can't - follow the rules. Confounded by her clashes with the rule-obsessed world around her, Phoebe seeks enlightenment from her unconventional drama teacher, even as her brilliant but anguished mother looks to Phoebe herself for inspiration.

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National Theatre Live: Medea(2014)

Medea is a wife and a mother. For the sake of her husband, Jason, she’s left her home and borne two sons in exile. But when he abandons his family for a new life, Medea faces banishment and separation from her children. Cornered, she begs for one day’s grace. It’s time enough. She exacts an appalling revenge and destroys everything she holds dear.

7.4

Denial(2004)

The popular Arnold Wesker play filmed at the Bristol Old Vic.

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Reckless Serenade(2014)

Seeking quite in the park, a young songwriter runs into three familiar strangers with some bad news.

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Besos perdidos(1945)

A man thinks he is not the father of his presumed daughter.

5.0

Where We Disappear(2019)

A story of survival about a woman's first night in a Soviet prison camp. After committing a crime to protect her son, Anastasia is sentenced to 12 years in a Soviet prison camp. Her arrival upsets the balance between the inmates. In a night of backstabbing and shifting alliances, she must find a way to escape and discover the hidden truth of her survival.

5.8

National Theatre Live: Barber Shop Chronicles(2018)

For generations, African men have gathered in barber shops to discuss the world. These are places where the banter can be barbed and the truth is always telling. Follow along as we leap from a barber shop in Peckham to Johannesburg, Harare, Kampala, Lagos and Accra over the course of a single day.

7.6

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A Play Entitled Sehnsucht(2012)

A hypnotic play going inside the mind of a mental astronomer

10.0

Les Justes(2019)

Today, immense confusion reigns over the quest for the absolute, revolt and fury, violence and its appendages. And many people plunge back in Albert Camus' work to find answers. In the foreword to his play, the philosopher and writer summarizes the intrigue as follows: "In February 1905, in Moscow, a group of terrorists, belonging to the Socialist Revolutionary Party, organized a bomb attack against the Grand Duke Serge, Tsar's uncle ”. The rapper and slammer Abd Al Malik offers with this "musical tragedy" a contemporary staging of "The Just", a complete creation, faithful to the text of Camus, but reinventing a scenic and musical language resolutely inscribed in our time.

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Shimmer(1993)

The solo actor in Shimmer tells the story by becoming each character in turn. The play takes place in 1956, in a harsh Midwestern juvenile detention center, where two boys befriend each other.

7.5

What Where(2000)

There are five survivors in a futuristic library. Bam is their supreme dictator, and has the others interrogated and tortured, believing them to have said where. What Bam means is unclear, but he distrusts all.

6.0

National Theatre Live: Everyman(2015)

Everyman is successful, popular and riding high when Death comes calling. He is forced to abandon the life he has built and embark on a last, frantic search to recruit a friend, anyone, to speak in his defence. But Death is close behind, and time is running out. One of the great primal, spiritual myths, Everyman asks whether it is only in death that we can understand our lives. A cornerstone of English drama since the 15th century, it now explodes onto the stage in a startling production with words by Carol Ann Duffy, Poet Laureate, and movement by Javier De Frutos.

1.0

National Theatre Live: Man and Superman(2015)

Academy Award® nominee Ralph Fiennes (The English Patient, Schindler’s List, Oedipus at the National Theatre) plays Jack Tanner in this exhilarating reinvention of Shaw’s witty, provocative classic. Jack Tanner, celebrated radical thinker and rich bachelor, seems an unlikely choice as guardian to the alluring heiress, Ann. But she takes it in her assured stride and, despite the love of a poet, she decides to marry and tame this dazzling revolutionary. Tanner, appalled by the whiff of domesticity, is tipped off by his chauffeur and flees to Spain, where he is captured by bandits and meets The Devil. An extraordinary dream-debate, heaven versus hell, ensues. Following in hot pursuit, Ann is there when Tanner awakes, as fierce in her certainty as he is in his. A romantic comedy, an epic fairytale, a fiery philosophical debate, Man and Superman asks fundamental questions about how we live.

5.6

The Penthouse(1967)

A married man and his young mistress suffer sadistic torture when Tom, Dick and Harry invade their penthouse.

5.6

Tyler Perry's I Can Do Bad All By Myself - The Play(2002)

When Madea gets sick, her family comes to her aid. What they don't realize is that they're the ones who need her help. As always, Madea's cockeyed outlook on life saves the day and guarantees side-splitting laughs along the way.

7.0

Anonymous(2011)

Set against the backdrop of the succession of Queen Elizabeth I, and the Essex Rebellion against her, the story advances the theory that it was in fact Edward De Vere, Earl of Oxford who penned Shakespeare's plays.

6.4

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The Little Minister(1975)

In rural 1840's Scotland, Gavin Dishart arrives to become the new "little minister" of Thrums's Auld Licht church. He meets a mysterious young gypsy girl in the dens and to his horror Babbie draws him into her escape from the soldiers after she incites a Luddite riot. But unknown to Gavin, Babbie is more than she seems. And they must overcome her secret, the villagers' fears of her, and worst of all, Gavin's devotion to his mother's sensibilities, before they can openly declare their love.

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Shirin(2009)

A hundred and fourteen famous Iranian theater and cinema actresses and a French star: mute spectators at a theatrical representation of Khosrow and Shirin, a Persian poem from the twelfth century, put on stage by Kiarostami. The development of the text -- long a favorite in Persia and the Middle East -- remains invisible to the viewer of the film, the whole story is told by the faces of the women watching the show.

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