performed in its new form in 1988 to considerable success at the Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond-upon-Thames, directed by Sam Walters and John Gardyne, and starring Polly Hemingway and David Rintoul. In 1991, it was adapted and directed for BBC 2 by Anthony Page, starring Dame Judi Dench. The play was revived by Page at the National Theatre in 1995, again with Dench in the leading role. In 2018, the National staged another revival, directed by Joe Hill-Gibbins and starring Kate Fleetwood. See also Nick Smurthwaite's theatre profile of Ackland for The Stage, Revival of a Realist, 5 February 2004 Film career Rodney Ackland's first contact with Alfred Hitchcock was as a supporting actor in The Skin Game (1931), a screen version of the John Galsworthy play. Hitchcock, however, recognised his potential as a screenwriter and collaborating with him on the second film adaptation of J Jefferson Farjeon's London fog-bound thriller Number Seventeen (1932) starring Leon M. Lion. Ackland co-wrote the British film Bank Holiday (1938), contributed additional dialogue to Young Man's Fancy (1940), and made some uncredited contributions to Dangerous Moonlight (1941) and Love Story (1944). His screenplay for Hatter's Castle (1942), from the novel by A.J. Cronin, provided a rampant star role for Robert Newton as the megalomaniac Scottish hatter. He shared with Emeric Pressburger an Academy Award nomination for the screenplay of 49th Parallel (US: The Invaders, 1941), starring Raymond Massey and Eric Portman. Ackland is credited with discovering the actress Sally Ann Howes, the child of neighbour Bobby Howes, when he insisted that she audition for his film Thursday's Child (1943), which he both wrote and directed. He renewed his association with Pressburger with the two men co-writing the screenplay for the thriller Wanted for Murder (1946), mainly intended as a film vehicle for Eric Portman playing a man obsessed by his father's role as the public hangman. Around the same time, he made Temptation Harbour (1947), the first adaptation]] of Georges Simenon's novel Newhaven/Dieppe, directed by Lance Comfort, again with Robert Newton. He twice collaborated with Rattigan as a screenwriter, on the Anthony Asquith film Uncensored (1942), starring Eric Portman; and for the Associated British production of Bond Street (1948), an anthology film consisting of four stories about a wedding trousseau. Neither Ackland nor Rattigan were credited on the latter film. His final work for the cinema was on the screenplay for The Queen of Spades