Fry wrote this in the aftermath of world war II and this production was made as the US left Vietnam. In these post Iraq days it needs to be re-released, as it catches the best and worst of humanity in a single play. There are other versions, but they miss the ache and reality that this production brings forth.If you can see it, do so.Our hero is war weary, our lady is an educated woman who speaks French to her poodle and kept a peacock whose cries terrified one of the serving girls such that she was sure it was the Devil himself.. Our hero wishes to die, our lady's wish is to live, and they meet in a justice's home on a memorable spring day.

My 2006 review is below, but for the small band of us crying out for this to be on DVD, I found it! Only I can't include the info here--it's against IMDb rules--so Google the title + Chamberlain and look among the results. Yippee!The review:This broadcast positively transported me when I saw it on PBS, and I would buy it in a minute if someone had the good sense to issue it on DVD.There's a version starring Kenneth Branaugh (much of whose work I love) that's very watchable, but it doesn't reach the heights this one does.If you've never seen or read anything by Chrisopher Fry, as I hadn't, you'll be astonished that it was written for 20th century audiences. It's a serious look at life disguised as a romantic comedy set in medieval England. The cast is uniformly excellent, and Chamberlain and Atkins are magical. (After playing Dr Kildare on American television for several seasons, Chamberlain went to Britain to study and work; he ended up playing Hamlet in a major production. This performance shows what he can do when allowed to.)They say life's a comedy to those who think..."The Lady's Not for Burning" is a comedy *for* those who think.

Fortunately, I don't have to rely on my memory (thank God --I'd be in serious difficulty if I did) of the original broadcast because I had the foresight (aka sheer dumb luck) to tape it from the PBS showing. I was living in Washington DC then and the local PBS station offered good, clear reception, so the video was better than I'd expected. A year ago, I translated all my videos to DVD and recently watched it for perhaps the sixth or seventh time.I would be hard-pressed to voluntarily watch another version of the play, after seeing the superb performances of Richard Chamberlain and Eileen Atkins. I was only 31 at the time, and fell in love with the divine Ms Atkins and have never really gotten over it. Those eyes...But it wasn't only the two leads: The whole cast was magnificent, with strong performances by Scott Hylands and Stephen McHattie as the two brothers, and a wonderfully doleful Tom Lacy as the chaplain. Laurie Prange is deliciously blond as the bemused Alizon and Rosemarie Murphy will live forever through her entrancing recitation of the line: I will burst my bud of calm and blossom into hysteria." Christopher Fry's language is the bones and sinews of the play, of course. The wit; the detached, almost antiseptic (and thus devastatingly understated) sketching of the evil stemming from human ignorance and greed; the inadequacy of reason against that evil; the even greater inadequacy of despair and nihilism --all of Fry's thoughts are there, although this version does take a few liberties with the text. (I was an English Major and was thus fated to read all the major British playwrights of the 20th century, perhaps because I took a course entitled Major British Playwrights of the Twentieth Century. As I remember, I received a C. In any case, I still have the text and read along with the performance.) The fleshing out of the play comes from the cast, and the sharp, careful direction of Joseph Hardy. In particular, the interplay between Chamberlain and Eileen Atkins is both compelling and appealing. One might think that Chamberlain is too "pretty" to play the part of Mendip, a hard-bitten, disillusioned veteran, but such is not the case. In fact, if anything, his good looks make the internal bitterness come through even more convincingly than if he were a glowering, heavy-featured ruffian. As for Ms Atkins... all she needs is her eyes: expressive (of course) mutable, so large they seem almost unreal, and so full of depth and wonder that you have no difficulty believing that Mendip must eventually succumb, or that she becomes the unwitting object of desire from the Devize brothers. The only wonder is that it takes so long. Two moments among many: when she stands before the Devizes and others with an oration that begins "May I, Jennet Jourdemayne, the daughter of a man who believed that the universe was governed by certain laws, be allowed to speak?" and ends with the wonderful line: "If, as a living creature, I wish in all good faith to continue living, where do you suggest I lodge my application?" The second: (spoken to Thomas Mendip): "And do you think your gesture of death is going to change it? (the world) Except for me." The look in her eyes as she says that to him should make every man afraid of women for the rest of his life. One glance, and you are lost forever --as is Thomas.Somewhere, sometime, someone will see the wisdom of restoring and re-issuing this classic performance. Until then, I will slip my lil' ol' DVD in the player and fall in love all over again.

I fell in love with Richard Chamberlain the night I saw this. If I saw it in 1974, then I was, god help us all, twelve years old. So long ago, and so different a person, and I retain a memory of it that is bright and painful, like sunlight."The Lady's Not for Burning" is a world-weary play about the darkness of the human soul, and about the grace that sometimes shines through that darkness and blesses the ones it shines upon.The setting is a generic town in the generic middle ages. Jennet, a lovely woman of some property, is identified and hounded as a witch, the excuse being that the old rag-and-bones man has been found dead. The mayor of the town promises to hang her tomorrow, but just that night, he's busy with an important party. A mercenary, Thomas Mendip, who has seen too much of the world, demands to be hanged because it was he who killed the rag-and-bones man. The mayor refuses Thomas's request, and insists that Jennet must be hung on the following day. The discussion of who is to be hanged, and why, is so funny you can hurt your sides laughing, and so grim that you want to cry.The play is, throughout, a darkly humorous portrait of the human condition. The priest who coddles his violin as if it were his only child, is utterly adrift from the world. He is unable to perform any of his proper functions as a priest, or even, really, as a human. He provides an odd counterpoint to the life and death issues that Thomas and Jennet face.This may be Richard Chamberlain's best performance. It is intense and understated. His Thomas is grim in exactly the right ways, with his generosity and sweetness expressed in his despair, a neat trick, even for a good actor. I've seen Chamberlain in other productions, but none of those performances seem as nuanced and sharply defined as this one.The later production, starring Branagh, is less impressive. As a general rule, Branagh is a better actor, but in this particular case, he is too arrogant. Chamberlain plays the flamboyant role of Thomas with a humility that makes the character more tragic, and funnier, and in the end, more satisfying than Branaugh's more dramatic rendition. Branaugh draws attention to himself in his role as Thomas, while Chamberlain's performance more realistically portrays what the character is trying to do, not draw attention to himself, but draw attention away from Jennet.The spirit of this play is very similar to many of Tom Stoppard's plays. And both of them have a strong resonance of Shakespeare.I, too, wish that they would release the PBS version of "The Lady's Not for Burning." Failing that, I wish it weren't so hard to find either of the other two productions. Surely, it's time for another production? It's such a brilliant play.(Please note: I'm doing the plot summary from memory. I may well have some details wrong. If so, I humbly beg your pardon.)