David Rudkin – författare

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.

Sure there's no end to the disasters that could choose to unfurl themselves on the world. 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 yields a bitter crop. The weather turns, friction mounts and pesticide begins to fall...

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.

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.

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.

Sure there's no end to the disasters that could choose to unfurl themselves on the world. 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 yields a bitter crop. The weather turns, friction mounts and pesticide begins to fall...

Red Sun and Merlin Unchained are the most recent original stage works by one of the most acknowledged yet neglected dramatists of our time. Red Sun is a two-hander, tightly tethered within the classical unities of theme and space and the span of a single day. Merlin Unchained is an explosive, multitudinous epic, crossing continents and centuries and passing between worlds. Yet though technically so contrasting, both works speak with the same distinctive voice, offering an exhilarating and sometimes disturbing challenge to the cultural and political perceptions of a contemporary audience, and exploring alien worlds that, alarmingly, begin to become recognizable as our own.