Hamlet Within: five acts in search of a murderous prince

Director: Ken McMullen

Year: 2010

A writer returns, disillusioned, to London and Paris. He begins on a story: a sleeper cell of young, glamorous urban terrorists. Gabriella, glamorous trophy wife of a young king-in-exile, holed up in an opulent London riverside penthouse, falls under the spell of a modern-day Che Guevara and, Patty Hearst-style, enlists in The Cause. She is sent to Paris under the 'front' of a drama student aiming at film. She takes her studies exceptionally seriously: encounters Bernard Stiegler, the leading philosopher on the subject of cinema and the human condition, and other luminaries. And she meets fellow-"student" activists, half-sister and -brother Julia and Sam, skilled actors who seem more interested in petty crime and scams. Their father is a political prisoner held in London; is he the master-mind? Has he been grooming them since childhood? Our writer adopts the persona of a sleuth as he follows these anti-heroes. Books are passed, stolen: do they bear coded messages? Why is Gabriella obsessed with capturing her interviews on an outdated Nagra tape-recorder? What is their connection with the incipient terrorism on the city streets? So our writer/sleuth uncovers events; but is he documenting actuality, or inventing a fiction?

Director: Matt Nicholas

Year: 2026

Dr. Atkins, the hospital’s expert in removing “foreign objects”, finds himself in a bind when he forgets to get a present for his big wedding anniversary. When the perfect gift presents itself inside a patient, will he be willing to risk it all for love?

Director: David Skynner

Year: 2026

A 50-year-old widow, Emma, has lost everything since her husband, Sam, was killed and her final refuge, a holiday lodge in Cornwall is due to be repossessed too. She is harried by debt collectors, seeing things, agoraphobic, and convinced she is losing her mind. Desperate, she calls for help from any God listening, and in a dark wood, something hears her. Her dead husband is haunting her and appears and talks to her in the dead of night. Emma’s starts to experience dreams of a magical wood and strange figures of butterflies and men made from twigs start to appear in and around the lodge. Sam is advising that she must let go of the old, in order let a new life in, but this terrifies Emma. Emma starts to see moments from her future; each bleaker than the last and fears for her own survival. With eviction imminent, Emma agrees she must surrender, whatever that might mean. A creature made from forest appears and helps her to escape. She follows it into the magical wood from her dreams and is baptised in a beautiful river. When she emerges, she is reborn and ready for her new life.