Best movies like The Performance

A unique, carefully handpicked, selection of the best movies like The Performance Starring Nick Mancuso, Sienna Guillory, Graham Greene, Nicholas Campbell, and more. If you liked The Performance then you may also like: Varieties on Parade, Neil Young: Heart of Gold, Nora, Richard Pryor: Here and Now, Jolson Sings Again and many more popular movies featured on this list. You can further filter the list even more or get a random selection from the list of similar movies, to make your selection even easier.

An actor returns to give a one-man show at the location of his inaugural performance.

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Varieties on Parade

Following a live orchestra opening, emcee Eddie Garr greets the audience and tells them about his trip to Los Angeles, where out-of-work actors are always 'acting' while in their service-industry jobs. What follows is a cavalcade of wild and wacky performances.

Neil Young: Heart of Gold

In March 2005, Neil Young was diagnosed with a brain aneurysm. Four days before he was scheduled for a lifesaving operation, he headed to Nashville, where he wrote and recorded the country folk album Prairie Wind with old friends and family members. After the successful operation and recovery period, he returned to Nashville that August to play at the famed Ryman Auditorium, once again gathering together friends and family for this special performance.

Nora

"Nora" is based on true stories of the dancer Nora Chipaumire, who was born in Zimbabwe in 1965. In the film, Nora returns to the landscape of her childhood and takes a journey through some vivid memories of her youth. Using performance and dance, she brings her history to life in a swiftly-moving poem of sound and image. A girl who is constantly embattled - struggling against all kinds of intimidation and violence - but who slowly gathers strength, pride and independence.

Richard Pryor: Here and Now

One of comedian Richard Pryor's later stand-up performances. As foul-mouthed as ever, Pryor touches on most of the same topics as in his previous live shows.

Jolson Sings Again

In this sequel to The Jolson Story, we pick up the singer's career just as he has returned to the stage after a premature retirement. But his wife has left him and the appeal of the spotlight isn't what it used to be. This time Jolson trades in the stage for life in the fast lane: women, horses, travel. It takes the death of Moma Yoelson and World War II to bring Jolson back to earth - and to the stage. Once again teamed with manager Steve Martin, Jolson travels the world entertaining troops everywhere from Alaska to Africa. When he finally collapses from exhaustion it takes young, pretty nurse Ellen Clark to show him there's more to life than "just rushing around".

The Big Show

The gang creates its own makeshift county fair, highlighted by a "movie," which is really a clever stage performance.

Bill Cosby: Himself

A 1983 stand-up comedy film featuring the comedy of Bill Cosby. Filmed before a live audience at the Hamilton Place Theatre, in Hamilton, Ontario. Cosby gives his comedic views on people who drink too much and take drugs, going to the dentist, marriage and parenthood.

The Gladiator

A man returns to college and is talked into joining he football team and is a real joke on the team, until he is given a drug that gives him super strength.

There's Always Vanilla

A young man returns to his home city of Pittsburgh and moves in with an older woman who he begins to rely on for emotional and financial support.

Heebee Jeebees

A hypnotist comes to town and puts the gang in animal-like trances. Now that the spell is off, the gang returns back to their usual roles. But then while at an afternoon tea social , the spell returned, ruining a perfectly good afternoon.

Isla Blanca

Mathilde returns home after eight years to say goodbye to her terminally ill mother.

Who Will Start Another Fire

An omnibus film featuring nine works by emerging filmmakers of color, Who Will Start Another Fire is the inaugural project of Dedza Films, a distribution initiative focused on showcasing underrepresented communities and the next wave of international storytellers.

Shakespeare-Wallah

The story of a family troupe of English actors who travel around the towns and villages in India giving performances of Shakespearean plays. Through their travels we see the changing face of India as the old is replaced by the new, Maharajas become hotel owners, sports become more important than culture and the theater is replaced by Bollywood movies. Based on the travels of Geoffrey Kendal with his daughter Felicity Kendal.

Le roi de Paris

Victor Derval is returning home after a performance when he is hailed by Lisa, a young Hungarian woman. Her motives are mysterious; is she simply a star-struck peasant girl, or an ambitious, manipulative aspiring star?

The Actors

During the run of a particularly awful interpretation of Richard III, the star, Anthony O'Malley, begins to frequent a rough pub to develop his character. He meets Barreller who he discovers owes someone he's never met a considerable sum of money. Seeing an opportunity to make some fast money, O'Malley convinces hapless extra, Tom, to meet Barreller as the debt collector.

The Secret Policeman's Ball

Amnesty decided not to present a benefit show in 1978 in order to consider how to make better use of the performing talent so favourably disposed to assist it in raising funds. Peter Luff left Amnesty in 1978 and the organisation's new fund-raising officer, Peter Walker, was deputed to work with Lewis on reconfiguring the show to raise more money and greater awareness of Amnesty. Lewis proposed to Cleese that in addition to the comedy performances the show should feature some contemporary rock musicians. Cleese delegated this responsibility to Lewis who recruited Who guitarist Pete Townshend to perform, as well as New Wave singer-songwriter Tom Robinson.

Murder at the Windmill

A man watching a musical show at the Windmill theatre is shot apparently from the stage. The cast continues the performance so that the detective can solve the murder.

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

In 1846, Anthony Hope sails into London with the mysterious Sweeney Todd, a once-naive barber whose life and marriage was uprooted by a corrupt justice system. Todd confides in Nellie Lovett, the owner of a local meat pie shop, and the two become partners, as Todd swears revenge on those that have wronged him and decides to take up his old profession.

National Theatre Live: Julius Caesar

Caesar returns in triumph to Rome and the people pour out of their homes to celebrate. Alarmed by the autocrat’s popularity, the educated élite conspire to bring him down. After his assassination, civil war erupts on the streets of the capital. Nicholas Hytner’s production will thrust the audience into the street party that greets Caesar’s return, the congress that witnesses his murder, the rally that assembles for his funeral and the chaos that explodes in its wake.

Paul Robeson

Major events in the life of Robeson are recounted in this solo performance.

National Theatre Live: Present Laughter

As he prepares to embark on an overseas tour, star actor Garry Essendine’s colourful life is in danger of spiralling out of control. Engulfed by an escalating identity crisis as his many and various relationships compete for his attention, Garry’s few remaining days at home are a chaotic whirlwind of love, sex, panic and soul-searching.

A Bread Factory: Part One

After 40 years of running their community arts space The Bread Factory, Dorothea and Greta are suddenly fighting for survival when a pair of celebrity performance artists from China come to Checkford and build an enormous complex down the street, catapulting big changes in their small town.

The Strike

When a trio of struggling and increasingly desperate thirty-something actors - Alberto, Molly and Richard - discover that A-list talent agent Carlo Lombardi is taking classes at the yoga studio where Molly teaches, they concoct the perfect scheme to convince him of their talent: Lay siege to the yoga studio, tie Carlo up, and with a gun to his head give the performance of their lives. A perfect plan! Now what could go wrong?

National Theatre Live: 50 Years on Stage

To celebrate its 50th anniversary, the National Theatre of Great Britain presents National Theatre: 50 Years on Stage, bringing together the best British actors for a unique evening of unforgettable performances, broadcast live from London to cinemas around the world.

The Actor

A mentally-disturbed aspiring actor returning to New York City discovers the world of social media and faces the horrifying power of the Internet.

Puss in Boots

The Children's Theatre Company of Minneapolis re-imagines the classic fairy tale as a jazz musical set in New Orleans.

Rude

While Rudy Ray Moore is best remembered today for his outrageous blaxploitation movies, such as Dolemite and The Human Tornado, he started out as a standup comedian who broke barriers for off-color comedy on such "party" albums as Eat Out More Often. Rude is a performance film which captures Moore on-stage at a comedy club, delivering the rhyming rap routines and epic tales of sexual conquest that first made him famous.

An Angel Comes To Brooklyn

An angel returns to Earth to help a Broadway producer put on a show, so a struggling young actress will have a job.

Michigan vs. Ohio State: The Rivalry

Steeped in a rich tradition dating back to their inaugural meeting in 1897, this rivalry extends beyond the pursuit of a Big Ten title, and is renewed each year through the pageantry and colliding cultures that distinguish the two schools.

William Holden: The Golden Boy

It was said of him that in more than seventy films, he never once gave a bad performance. William Holden was a charming and unconventional man with a “wild streak” and a compulsion to test himself at every turn.

Home, James

Actor James Mason returns to his Huddersfield roots. Harking back to his childhood memories, he remarks how the town has changed and developed but the people have remained the same.

The Topdog Diaries

An intimate portrait of Suzan-Lori Parks, featuring actors Don Cheadle and Jeffrey Wright. The film shows the playwright’s process and how a play gets produced in behind-the-scenes footage of Topdog/Underdog in rehearsal and performance. It captures the play’s triumphant Broadway debut and traces Parks’ opportunities, challenges, and personal milestones during the production of her 2002 Pulitzer Prize winner.

National Theatre Live: Coriolanus

When an old adversary threatens Rome, the city calls once more on her hero and defender: Coriolanus. But he has enemies at home too. Famine threatens the city, the citizens’ hunger swells to an appetite for change, and on returning from the field Coriolanus must confront the march of realpolitik and the voice of an angry people.

When Morning Comes

In the emotionally resonant feature debut from Kelly Fyffe-Marshall (winner of TIFF’s inaugural Shawn Mendes Changemaker Award in 2020), a young Jamaican boy grapples with his widowed mother’s decision to relocate to Canada.

Red

Under the watchful gaze of his young assistant, the artist Mark Rothko takes on his greatest challenge yet: to create a definitive series of paintings for the Philip Johnson-designed Four Seasons restaurant in architect Mies van der Rohe’s iconic Seagram Building. Award-winning stage and screen actor Alfred Molina reprises his critically acclaimed performance as the American abstract expressionist painter Mark Rothko in playwright John Logan’s Tony Award-winning 2010 play Red. Molina is joined by rising star Alfred Enoch (How to Get Away With Murder) as Rothko’s assistant Ken. Original Broadway director Michael Grandage returns to direct this 2018 West End revival, the first U.K. production since the play’s 2009 world premiere at the Donmar Warehouse.

National Theatre Live: Yerma

A woman is driven to the unthinkable by her desperate desire to have a child in Simon Stone’s radical production of Lorca’s achingly powerful masterpiece.

The Oresteia

Agamemnon returns home from the Trojan war and is murdered by his wife, setting off a chain of revenge that stretches across this trilogy of play. Directed by Peter Brook for the National Theatre, this is an all-male performance with masks.

The Gin Game

Set in an old folks home, senior citizen Weller Martin (Hume Cronyn) has the disease of Old Age, meets an old woman named Fonsia Dorsey (Jessica Tandy) who's diabetic. They both discuss issues such as society, the hospitals, money, families, and the folks home where they live, over a game of Gin Rummy. Fonsia has never played before so Weller teachers her. Instantly she goes on a winning streak, making it very hard for Weller not to lose his temper. But he does. Both put out an excellent performance with a lot of swearing!

A Clever Woman

Phoebe and Dot have returned to their family home on the Isle of Wight a year after the death of their composer mother. As they prepare the house for its sale, clearing decades of family clutter, they have started to work on a site-specific performance piece about their complex relationship with their mother and her serial infidelities.

National Theatre Live: Hansard

It's a summer's morning in 1988 and Tory politician Robin Hesketh has returned home to the idyllic Cotswold house he shares with his wife of 30 years, Diana. But all is not as blissful as it seems. Diana has a stinking hangover, a fox is destroying the garden, and secrets are being dug up all over the place. As the day draws on, what starts as gentle ribbing and the familiar rhythms of marital scrapping quickly turns to blood-sport.

Genesis: The Last Domino?

Genesis – The Last Domino? follows Tony Banks, Phil Collins and Mike Rutherford and their crew as they build and rehearse their Last Domino tour. Despite the complications and uncertainties of the global COVID pandemic, and without confirmed dates, the band made the decision to spend the time and money so they would be prepared once the world returned to normal. The film follows the creative and emotional processes involved and features band interviews and live performances from the spectacular yet-to-be-seen show.

Carmen

Jonas Kaufmann and Anna Caterina Antonacci bring rare erotic intensity to the drama of Don José and Carmen in this darkly passionate reading of one of the most popular operas. Kaufmann uses his burnished tenor and smouldering good looks to portray the man undone by Carmen's love. As the object of his desire, Antonacci gives a physical and compelling performance.

Don Carlo - ROH

Rolando Villazón Triumphantly Returns To The Stage As Don Carlo In The 2007/2008 Royal Opera House'S Producton Of Don Carlo. National Theatre director Nicholas Hytner's new staging of Verdi's grandest-- and arguably greatest -- opera, Don Carlo, was the highlight of the 2007/2008 Royal Opera House season. This new production marked Rolando Villazón's much anticipated and triumphant return. Set amidst the political, religious and sexual intrigue of the 16th century Spanish court, this epic work tells the tragic story of Don Carlo, a virtuous young prince who is pitted against the powers of a dominant, corrupt society. First staged at The Royal Opera House in 1886, this new production is the first new version of the 5-Act complete opera to be staged at Covent Garden in 50 years. With sets and costumes by Bob Crowley, direction by Nicholas Hytner, and an enviable cast, this production of Don Carlo is worthy of the greatness of Verdi's original, masterful work.

Jerusalem

Jerusalem is the first of four videos (followed by Sublimation [2003], Conjunction [2003] and The Pearl [2004]) exploring inter-dimensional travel. In this inaugural episode a group of young actors inhabit an empty apartment, their behavior taped and edited in-camera. An analog solarization technique captures their rituals of improvised dance, frozen poses and trimming of hair. Each cast member recounts painful personal life episodes that unfold like cheap sci-fi stories of otherworldly abductions, familial vanishings, strange dreams and reptilian passions.

Death Cast

Six young and hopeful actors land roles in an experimental horror film shooting on a remote location. Their performances will be captured without any crew present in a single, uninterrupted take by cameras and drones positioned around the set. As the day progresses, the line between the film they are shooting and actual terror is blurred as they find themselves in a real life-or-death situation.

Higher Methods

Matt is an actor whose sister goes missing years prior. His search for her leads to fanatical theatre group, whose leader employs horrifying methods in sharing the art of performance. What follows for Matt is a descent down the rabbit hole until he cannot determine what is real and what is fiction.

Command Performance

Prince Alexis of Kordovia refuses to do his duty under threat of war. Recently arrested actor Peter Fedor conveniently bears a striking resemblance to the prince. The King and Queen hatch a plan to force the prince to do his duty.

The Return of Alan Strange

While a modern feature film remake of '60s time-travelling detective show "Alan Strange" is in the making, actor Peter Hennessey (who originated the role) receives an invitation to a mysterious New Year's Eve party.

The Last of Us: One Night Live

To celebrate the launch of the PS4 version of The Last of Us, Naughty Dog brings last year’s Game of the Year to life in front of hundreds of fans in Santa Monica. This special one night only event will celebrate the artistry behind the game with a performance of the score, plus a “live read” of key scenes featuring the principal actors, as directed by Neil Druckmann

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