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Live theatre is ephemeral. Write a novel, make a film, paint a painting; people can read or view it decades — even centuries — later. But once the scenery is carted off, a particular production of a play or musical is a thing of the past. Since the advent of the original cast album, many musicals have left behind an important record (in the form of a record). A relative handful of non-musicals have gone into the recording studio as well, but this is an infinitesimal minority. Certain musicals and plays have been preserved on video, and many can be viewed in the archives of the Performing Arts Research Collection at Lincoln Center. These, though, are not readily accessible.

Since 1967, the annual Tony Award telecasts have preserved songs from any number of nominated musicals. (Earlier, excerpts were broadcast on various TV variety shows, with Ed Sullivan leading the way.) Acorn Media has released a fair selection of Tony excerpts on three DVDs, under the title "Broadway's Lost Treasures." Last year, the three volumes were packaged into a box set, with a fourth DVD containing scenes from non-musicals. Many fans already owned the musical DVDs, so Acorn has now released the bonus disc separately. The Best of the Tony Award: The Plays contains brief scenes from 19 plays. There's not all that much you can tell about a play from a two-minute snippet. What I have found, somewhat to my surprise, is that well-chosen snippets make a powerful souvenir of individual performances.

The obvious place to start is with the earliest of these scenes, from Howard Sackler's The Great White Hope (1968). James Earl Jones gave what remains, to this day, one of the most remarkable stage performances I've ever seen. This is only approximated in the clip, as they've chosen a group scene with about a dozen actors, including Jane Alexander and Lou Gilbert. (I had totally forgotten Gilbert, but this clip reminds me how good he was, too, as Goldie, the trainer.) This might be a somewhat different James Earl Jones than viewers might expect. The later and more familiar Jones is also present on the DVD, in the scene from August Wilson's Fences in which he delivers that blistering speech about what he owes to his son (Courtney B. Vance). Great acting, brutally powerful and unforgettable.