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Rodney Ackland (18 May 1908, Westcliff-on-Sea, Essex – 6 December 1991, Richmond upon Thames, Surrey) was an English playwright, actor, theatre director and screenwriter. He was educated at Balham Grammar School in London. In his 16th year he made his first stage appearance at the Gate Theatre Studio, playing Medvedieff in Gorky's ''The Lower Depths'' and later studied acting at the Central School of Speech Training and Dramatic Art. He married Mab Lonsdale, daughter of the playwright Frederick Lonsdale, in 1952; she died in 1972. ==Theatre career== In 1929, after performing with various repertory companies, he toured as Young Woodley in the play of that name. At the Gaiety Theatre in 1933 he played Paul in his own adaptation of ''Ballerina'', which also toured the following year, and at the Criterion in 1936 he played the role of Oliver Nashwick in his own original play ''After October'' which transferred there from the Arts Theatre. In 1941, he co-wrote the screenplay for the film ''Temptation Harbour'' starring Robert Newton and Simone Simon. Two musical collaborations came in 1942 with his version of ''Blossom Time'' starring Richard Tauber as Franz Schubert at the Lyric Theatre, and his London Coliseum production of the musical play, ''The Belle of New York''. He also wrote and directed ''The Dark River'' at the Whitehall Theatre in 1943, starring Peggy Ashcroft. He joined Robert Newton as co-authors of ''Cupid and Mars'' (1945), and ''A Multitude of Sins'' (1951) The first staging of his large-cast drama, ''The Pink Room'' (or ''The Escapists''), in Brighton and then at the Lyric Hammersmith in London on 18 June 1952, was largely financed by Terence Rattigan, who liked the play and believed it deserved a London production. ''The Pink Room'' was a tragi-comedy was set in the summer of 1945 in a seedy London club (based on the French Club in Soho).〔The Oxford Companion to English Literature, 6th Edition. Edited by Margaret Drabble, Oxford University Press, 2000 Pp 4〕 It received a severe critical panning and after that, apart from one further play and an adaptation, it led to a 40-year near-silence from the playwright. According to its director, Frith Banbury, "When the play failed, Terry never wanted to see Rodney again." However, following the abolition of the Lord Chamberlain's licensing and censorship functions in 1968, there was a growing permissiveness about what could be presented on the stage, and in the 1980s, while ailing with leukaemia, Rodney Ackland rewrote aspects of this play, re-titling it ''Absolute Hell''. It was put on 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 Television by Anthony Page, starring Dame Judi Dench, and the play was revived by Page at the Royal National Theatre in 1995, again with Dench in the leading role. See also Nick Smurthwaite's theatre profile of Ackland for The Stage, ''Revival of a Realist'', 5 February 2004 () 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Rodney Ackland」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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