Nigel Hess starring Dame Judi Dench and Dame Maggie Smith. The music has become popular worldwide, and was performed in the film by violinist Joshua Bell with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. While Hess was House Composer for the Royal Shakespeare Company he contributed twenty scores for RSC productions, and highlights from his Shakespeare scores have been recorded and performed by the RPO in concert as "The Food of Love", hosted by Dame Judi Dench and Sir Patrick Stewart. His most recent RSC scores were for Christopher Luscombe's productions of "Love's Labour's Lost" and "Love's Labour's Won". Hess was awarded the New York
Rodney Ackland 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,