Drama

Charcters: 2 male, 2 female w/doubling

Bare stage with set pieces

Anne and Colin are a thirty-ish British couple who desperately want a child. With stark realism, harrowing insight, and dark humor, their efforts to achieve this blessing are portrayed as the embers of their hope become the ashes of their dreams and with bitter experience they summon the strength and love to go on.

"Probably the most important play of the season...It is entertaining, it is funny, it is bitter, and it is handsomely poetic."-The New York Times

"Astonishing!"-The Village Voice

Lawrence Gordon Clark directs this triple bill of BBC adaptations of the ghost stories by M.R. James. In 'Lost Hearts' (1973) young orphan Stephen (Simon Gipps-Kent) goes to stay at the generous Mr. Abney (Joseph O'Connor)'s estate where he is haunted by two children who previously lived in the house. It turns out the children have come to warn Stephen that Abney is not all that he seems. In 'The Ash Tree' (1975) Sir Richard Fell (Edward Petherbridge) inherits his uncle's manor and grounds. He moves in and decides to cut down an ash tree that could prove harmful to the property but before he gets the chance he begins to hear strange sounds and sees supernatural figures coming from the tree... In 'The Treasure of Abbot Thomas' (1974) cynical Reverend Somerton (Michael Bryant) is completely close-minded when it comes to paranormal activity. His steadfast beliefs falter, however, when his and Lord Peter Dattering (Paul Lavers)'s search for the treasure of alchemist Abbot Thomas (John Herrington) unleashes a terrifying spectre.

Alfred Hitchcock, at the height of his powers, is possessed by a dreamlike vision of a woman. From his director's chair the sixty year old Hitchcock begins to unravel some of the defining films of our time, drawing us into the imagination of one of the world's most mysterious creative minds. This poetic new play takes a unique look at the way the great filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock developed the idea of his most famous films, including Marnie, Vertigo, Psycho and Strangers on A Train. The result is a unique and haunting character study and an unprecedented journey into the mind of one our most fascinating cultural icons.

The three plays in this volume are representative of Ibsen's extraordinary achievement as a playwright. The first is perhaps his best known work, the great dramatic poem Peer Gynt, presented here in the acclaimed translation used by the Royal Shakespeare Company for its 1982 production. With this are Romersholm, in which Ibsen unmasks the moral evasions which prevent us from being truly free, and When We Dead Waken, in which a figure from the past rises to haunt an ageing artist. These distinctive translations are accompanied by an introductory foreword and are followed by notes on pronunciations and other details and aspects of Ibsen's original texts.

The harvest is ripe in a Black Country pear orchard. Seasoned hands settle to familiar tasks and the ritual education of newcomers. But corrupted lands yield a bitter crop. The weather turns, friction mounts, and pesticide begins to fall. Kenneth Tynan wrote in "The Observer," "Not since "Look Back in Anger "has a playwright made a debut more striking than this."

Described by its maker as a 'poem of horror', "Vampyr" (1932) is one of the founding works of psychological horror cinema, adapted from a collection of gothic stories by Sheridan Le Fanu and directed by the revered Danish director Carl Theodor Dreyer. Despite the fact that there is no definitive print and many English versions are marred by poor quality subtitles, the film remains a vivid,
extraordinary artwork in which the inner human state is made hauntingly visible.
In a reading as passionate as it is analytic, David Rudkin reveals how this film systematically binds the spectator - spatially and morally - into its mysterious world of the undead.
This second edition features a new foreword, discussion of the Martin Koerber and Cineteca di Bologna restoration of the film in 2008, and original cover artwork by Midge Naylor.

Exploring Penda's Fen, a 1974 BBC film that achieved mythic status. In 1974, the BBC broadcast the film Penda's Fen, leaving audiences mystified and spellbound. "Make no mistake. We had a major work of television last night," The Times declared the next morning. Written by the playwright and classicist David Rudkin, the film follows Stephen, an 18-year-old boy, whose identity, sexuality, and suffocating nationalism unravels through a series of strange visions. After its original broadcast, Penda's Fen vanished into unseen mythic status, with only a single rebroadcast in 1990 sustaining its cult following. With a DVD release by the BFI in 2016, Penda's Fen has now become totemic for those interested in Britain's deep history, folklore, and landscape. Of Mud and Flame brings together writers, artists, and historians to excavate and explore this unique cornerstone of Britain's uncanny archive. Contributors include David Rudkin, Sukhdev Sandhu, Roger Luckhurst, Gareth Evan, Adam Scovell, Bethany Whalley, Carl Phelpstead, David Ian Rabey, David Rolinson, Craig Wallace, Daniel O'Donnell Smith, William Fowler, Yvonne Salmon, Andy W. Smith, Carolyne Larrington, John Harle, Timothy J. Jarvis, Tom White, Daniel Eltringham, Joseph Brooker, Gary Budden