Vertigo - Stagetext (Plymouth) November 24, 2006

Vertigo

Genre: Drama

BY PIERRE BOILEAU AND THOMAS NARCEJAC
ADAPTED AND DIRECTED BY JONATHAN HOLLOWAY

Vertigo is a remarkable genre-hopping psychological thriller with an ending to equal The Usual Suspects. Best known as Hitchcock's classic movie, Jonathan Holloway repeats the coup of once again unearthing the original tale that inspired a great classic film.

Paris 1940. Turmoil as German forces mass on the frontier and invasion looks inevitable.

Tormented ex-policeman Roger Flavieres - stricken with vertigo and sickened with guilt after causing the death of a colleague - is asked to shadow a friend's beautiful wife in order to uncover her secrets. Rapidly bewitched by Madeleine, her allure is sweetened by a mysterious affliction - her impression she is the incarnation of an artist forebear who committed suicide. Roger's passionate affair ends in horror when, without warning, Madeleine throws herself from a church tower.

Roger descends into a private hell of lies, grief and guilt as France sinks into the nightmare of Nazi occupation. Surrendering to obsession, Roger embarks on a quest to find her - a quest that unearths the revelation of his own part in a terrible crime of which he has been totally ignorant.

Vertigo follows the success of Red Shift's The Third Man and Get Carter.