REVIEW: York Actors Collective in J M Barrie’s Mary Rose, York Theatre Royal Studio ****

Xandra Logan’s Mary Rose and Laurence O’Reilly’s Simon, her husband, in the island picnic scene in York Actors Collective’s Mary Rose. Picture: Clive Millard

ALFRED Hitchcock wanted to turn “the strangeness” of J M Barrie’s supernatural drama Mary Rose into a film with Tippi Hedren in the title role (but Universal Studios thwarted him).

The 1920 drama featured in the Guardian theatre critic Michael Billington’s list of Forgotten Plays. “I still think the play is due for rediscovery,” he wrote in August 2020, having seen the Hebridean ghost story 48 years earlier starring Mia Farrow in Manchester.

Now York Actors Collective grant him his wish in their third production, adapted and directed by artistic director Angie Millard for their York Theatre Royal Studio debut.

Angie’s mother called it one of her favourite plays, drawn to the “beautiful, charming story” at a long-gone performance in Sheffield. In turn, Angie wanted to explore why.

Here is the result, wherein she has, in her words, “severely adapted” Barrie’s text. “I have adapted the piece to suit contemporary audiences and offer a little more explanation than JM Barrie provided,” she explains in her programme note.

CharlesHutchPress is delighted to report that every decision was right, starting with the haunted manor house being relocated to Yorkshire, from Sussex, to bring it uncomfortably close to home for York audiences.

Millard has changed the structure too, from three acts with two intervals to three scenes pre-interval, then two more after the break, tightening the running time to increase the dramatic tension of a ghost story timed to coincide with Halloween. [On that theme, the lighting designer could not have a more apt name than Peter Howl!]

Spanning 41 years, taking in two World Wars and major changes in British society, Millard’s dramatisation opens in the Yorkshire house in 1950, where the furniture is covered in dust sheets and Beryl Nairn’s Mrs Ottery looks as white as one of those sheets as she leads Chris Pomfrett’s grizzled former soldier, Harry, into the drawing room.

He is the “lost boy” of the piece, needing to settle matters in his troubled mind from his past before returning to Australia (the ever-detailed Pomfrett giving him Aussie inflexions to acknowledge his time spent there), but Mrs Ottery is reluctant to let him into the next room. Is she in there, he asks. The aforementioned ghost.

The ashen Mrs Ottery departs, Harry falls asleep in the corner chair, whereupon the past comes alive, opening in 1909 as pipe-smoking Tony Froud and Victoria Delaney’s ever-so Edwardian Mr and Mrs Morland are discussing daughter Mary Rose (Xandra Logan), who has taken to her regular hiding place, the apple tree.

We shall learn that Mary Rose is young for her age, always wanting to play games. Her behaviour would now be called autistic, suggested Millard in her CharlesHutchPress interview, and when Simon (Laurence O’Reilly), a man in his 40s, seeks her hand in marriage at 18, the Morlands feel the need to reveal her past. Namely her childhood disappearance on an Hebridean island, returning out of thin air a month later with no recollection or explanation.

She will vanish again on a visit with her husband, only to turn up at the Morland house years later. Everyone else has aged, but she looks the same. (Whereas Barrie’s Peter Pan refuses to grow up, his Mary Rose simply doesn’t.)  

Your reviewer last saw Xandra Logan (or ‘Alexandra’ as she was credited in the cast list) as un uppity fledgling actress, Lily, in York Shakespeare Project’s Summer Sonnets in August, and here she comes on leaps and bounds as Mary Rose, outwardly young in physical appearance and manner but internally damaged by the loss of her young son in Barrie’s intense study of mother-love (drawing on his own experience as a neglected child).

 Millard has cast well throughout, from Nairn’s haunted figure in black to Joy Warner’s ever-concerned, philosophical Scottish gillie, Cameron; O’Reilly’s stern, earnest Simon to Clare Halliday’s Molly, the Morland’s supportive friend.

As much through what is not said as is said, Froud and Delaney capture the frictions and schisms of a couple struggling with parenting skills behind their Edwardian airs.

Pomfrett, delightfully irascible as a shamelessly corrupt police chief in Black Treacle Theatre’s Accidental Death Of An Anarchist only a fortnight ago, is a darker soul here, restless and questing as he bookends Barrie’s disturbed time play.

His closing scene of reconciliation with Logan’s Mary Rose is beautifully judged in tone by both players, bringing to a close this classy production of Barrie’s intriguing, strange, beguiling tale of liminal mystery, mother-and-son bonds, the burdens of loss and laying ghosts to rest.

What a shame that Hitchcock’s film plans hit a hitch but thankfully York Actors Collective have brought this Mary Rose back to the surface, revealing anew its  hidden treasures.

York Actors Collective in Mary Rose, York Theatre Royal Studio, today at 2pm and 7.45pm. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.

York Actors Collective enter the spirit of Halloween with J M Barrie’s haunted house drama Mary Rose at Theatre Royal Studio

Victoria Delaney, as Mrs Morland, and Tony Froud, as Mr Morland, in York Actors Collective’s Mary Rose. Picture: Clive Millard

YORK Actors Collective make their York Theatre Royal debut in the Studio with this week’s revival of J M Barrie’s haunted house drama Mary Rose, adapted and directed by Angie Millard.

Formed by a group of like-minded actors with the aim of producing entertaining and thought-provoking theatre, the company was launched in March 2023 with Joe Orton’s 1964 black comedy Entertaining Mr Sloane, followed in February 2024 by the gritty improvisational piece Beyond Caring, Alexander Zeldin’s topical exposé of the social damage inflicted by zero hours contracts. Both were staged at Theatre@41 in York.

Now comes Mary Rose, a third Barrie drama to play York Theatre Royal in recent years after the 2022-2023 pantomime All New Adventures Of Peter Pan and Northern Broadsides’ touring production of his Regency comedy Quality Street in May 2023.

In this one, an old Yorkshire manor house for sale – Sussex in the original – is haunted by the ghost of a young woman who once lived there.

Thirty-seven years earlier in 1913, a young girl, Mary Rose, went missing on an island in the Outer Hebrides while her father was out of sight. After a month, she mysteriously returns, unaware that she had been away and with no memory of the time she spent missing. 

Chris Pomfrett’s Harry and Beryl Nairn’s Mrs Ottery in Mary Rose. Picture: Clive Millard

Then, as a young married woman in 1938, Mary Rose persuades her husband to take her back to the island, only to disappear again. She reappears 22 years later, but she has remained the same while her husband, parents and son have all aged. 

Featured at number ten in Michael Billington’s August 2020 list of Forgotten Plays in the Guardian, Barrie’s “strange, sinister Hebridean ghost story about the intensity of mother-son relationships and the universal grief for loss” has long sparked Angie Millard’s intrigue.

“Barrie uses dimensions of time to great effect,” she says of a play that covers a period of 41 years, during which there were two World Wars and massive changes in British society.

“His treatment of love, loss and unwavering hope draws in an audience and gives it universality. I have adapted the script to appeal to modern thinking and offer a little more explanation than Barrie provided but his themes are intact. It remains a moving tribute to mother-love, loss and final reconciliation.”

The production run could not be better timed, coinciding with Halloween on October 31. “The strange and ghostly atmosphere of the play fits beautifully into the autumn slot, which includes Halloween and is a time for considering other worldliness,” says Angie.

Xandra Logan’s Mary Rose and Laurence O’Reilly’s husband Simon on their island picnic in Mary Rose

“I’ve wanted to direct Mary Rose for many years as it was a favourite of my mother’s, who  saw it in Sheffield and thought it was a beautiful and charming story.  I wanted York Actors Collective to produce something with a lot of theatrical effects, a contrast to what we have done before.

“I suggested this play with two or three other ideas to Juliet [Forster, York Theatre Royal’s creative director] and she settled on this one.”

Barrie’s supernatural play has been “severely adapted” by Angie. Why? “Because you can see the difference between Edwardian and modern-day audiences just by reading it,” she says. “I’ve changed it from three acts with two intervals to three scenes before the interval and two after, reducing the running time by about 20 minutes.

“I’ve also cut out one of the characters, Mr Morland’s friend. They would just talk about the value of art, and though it was supposed to be funny, it just didn’t work for a modern audience.”

Angie has capitalised on Halloween week, “but the ghost story is only one aspect of it,” she says. “It’s a story about mother-love,  about [Mary Rose] having a child and losing that child, and how that feels when you deeply love the child. It’s all about loss, framed in a ghost story.

Mary Rose director Angie Millard, left, and stage manager Em Peattie

“In rehearsals, it’s been about exploring characters and the loss they feel. We’ve had crying  in the rehearsal room, and I defy anyone to watch the last scene without a lump in their throat.”

Key to Angie’s decision to “offer a little more explanation” is her exploration of Mary Rose. “I’m trying to express her state of mind,” she says. “Mary Rose is clearly autistic, hiding in the apple tree as a child when the Morland family story opens in 1909. At 18, she could equally be taken for a child, talking about playing games.

“She’s too young for her age; her mother and father [Mr and Mrs Morland] recognise this, and in now having an actor in his 40s – rather than one in his 20s – as her husband, it works really well for having the bigger age discrepancy as it was a time when men married young women and no-one thought anything of it.”

You will note that Barrie’s Mary Rose mirrors Peter Pan in the theme of mothers and lost sons: Barrie grew up as a “lost boy”, neglected by his grieving mother after the death of his elder brother. Like Peter Pan too, the character of Mary Rose does not grow up.

“I’m also fascinated that Alfred wanted to do Mary Rose’s story as a film,” says Angie. “He could see the mileage in it, that strangeness typical of Hitchcock. “

Haunted: Beryl Nairn’s Mrs Ottery in York Actors Collective’s Mary Rose. Picture: Clive Millard

In Angie’s cast are Beryl Nairn as Mrs Ottery; Chris Pomfrett as Harry; Tony Froud as Mr Morland; Victoria Delaney as Mrs Morland; Clare Halliday as Molly; Xandra Logan as Mary Rose; Joy Warner as Cameron and Laurence O’Reilly, Angie’s poet son, as Simon, stepping into the role at three weeks’ notice.

York Actors Collective presents  J M Barrie’s Mary Rose, York Theatre Royal Studio, October 30 to November 2, 7.45pm plus 2.30pm Thursday and 2pm Saturday matinees. Box office: 01904 623568 or  yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.

Did you know?

MARY Rose premiered in London at the Haymarket Theatre in April 1920, running until February 1921. Fay Compton played Mary Rose, a role written for her by Barrie. The play opened in New York on Broadway in December  1920, running at the Empire Theatre for four months with Ruth Chatterton as Mary Rose.

A 1972 production by Manchester’s 69 Theatre Company starred American actress Mia Farrow, transferring to London.

Alfred Hitchcock planned to turn the play into a film, with Tippi Hedren in the title role, but was thwarted by Universal Studios.

What’s On in Ryedale, York & beyond, from fantastical tiger’s tale to ghostly goings-on. Hutch’s List No. 40, from Gazette & Herald

Balancing act: M6 Theatre Company in Mike Kenny’s A Tiger’s Tale at Helmsley Arts Centre

A TIGER adventure and a boy with a stammer, two ghost stories and a pioneering DJ are in the spotlight in Charles Hutchinson’s entertainment tips for the week ahead.

Ryedale children’s show of the week: M6 Theatre Company, A Tiger’s Tale, Helmsley Arts Centre, today, 2.30pm

ROCHDALE company M6 Theatre presents York playwright Mike Kenny’s fantastical, riotous adventure A Tiger’s Tale, the extraordinary story of Fenella, the Holmfirth Tiger, in a high-spirited balancing act of circus, puppetry, live music and song.

From a circus train in South Africa, to a steamboat on the Atlantic Ocean and onward to West Yorkshire, the ramshackle travelling troupe of Titch, Ma and Pa relates the unbelievable true story of a family of acrobats and their adopted tiger cub. Suitable for ages four to 11. Box office: 01439 771700 or helmsleyarts.co.uk.

Hilson Agbangbe’s Sonny in Bristol Old Vic’s Wonder Boy, on tour at York Theatre Royal. Picture: Steve Tanner

Play of the week: Wonder Boy, York Theatre Royal, until Saturday; evenings, 7.30pm, tonight and Friday; matinees, 2pm, Wednesday, Thursday; 2.30pm, Saturday

OLIVIER Award winner Sally Cookson directs Bristol Old Vic’s touring production of Wonder Boy, Ross Willis’s exploration of the power of communication, told through the experiences of 12-year-old Sonny and his imaginary friend Captain Chatter.

Playful humour, dazzling visuals and thrilling original music combine in this innovative show that uses live creative captioning on stage throughout as Sonny, who lives with a stammer, must find a way to be heard in a world where language is power. When cast in a school production of Hamlet by the head teacher, he discovers the real heroes are closer than he thinks. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.

Victoria Delaney as Mrs Morland and Tony Froud as Mr Morland in York Actors Collective’s production of J M Barrie’s Mary Rose at York Theatre Royal Studio. Picture: Clive Millard

Theatre Royal debut of the week: York Actors Collective in Mary Rose, York Theatre Royal Studio, tonight to Saturday, 7.45pm plus 2.30pm Thursday and 2pm Saturday matinees

YORK Actors Collective make their York Theatre Royal debut with a revival of Peter Pan and Quality Street playwright J M Barrie’s Mary Rose, adapted and directed by Angie Millard.

“Barrie uses dimensions of time to great effect,” she says. “His treatment of love, loss and unwavering hope draws in an audience and gives it universality. I’ve adapted the script to appeal to modern thinking but his themes are intact. The strange and ghostly atmosphere fits beautifully into our autumn slot, which includes Halloween and is a time for considering other worldliness.” Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.

Helmsley company Clap Trap Theatre in the ghost story The Room Upstairs at Helmsley Arts Centre

Haunted drama for Halloween week: Clap Trap Theatre in The Room Upstairs, Helmsley Arts Centre, Friday, 7.30pm

WHEN a young woman answers an advertisement for a trusted house-sitter, she arrives at a beautiful house in the middle of nowhere. It should be the perfect job but with one proviso. Please do not go into the room upstairs.

A mysterious cloaked figure narrates and commentates as two young people strive to unravel the long-held mystery of a haunted house in this new 55-minute black comedy by BAFTA-nominated television writer Tom Needham, performed by Cal Stockbridge, Florrie Stockbridge and Helmsley Arts Centre artistic director and Youth Theatre director Natasha Jones. Box office: 01439 771700 or helmsleyarts.co.uk.

Skylights: York band headline York Barbican for the first time this weekend

York gig of the week: Skylights, York Barbican, Saturday, doors 7pm

ANTHEMIC York indie band Skylights play their biggest home-city gig to date this weekend with support from Serotones and Pennine Suite.

Guitarist Turnbull Smith says: ‘We’re absolutely over the moon to be headlining the Barbican. It’s always been a dream of ours to play here. So to headline will be the perfect way to finish a great year. Thanks to everyone for the support. It means the world and we’ll see you all there.” Box office: ticketmaster.co.uk.

Rob Rouse: Headlining Laugh Out Loud Comedy Club at The Basement. Picture: Andy Hollingworth

Comedy gig of the week: Laugh Out Loud Comedy Club, Rob Rouse, Peter Brush, Faizan Shan and Damion Larkin, The Basement, City Screen Picturehouse, York, Saturday, 8pm

PEAK District comedian, television regular, Upstart Crow actor and self-help podcaster Rob Rouse, who trained as a geography teacher at the University of Sheffield, makes a rare York appearance with his hyperactive, loveable brand  of comedy.

Harrogate Comedian of the Year 2012 Peter Brush combines a slight, bespectacled frame and scruffy hair with quirky one-liners and original material, delivered in an amusingly awkward fashion. Manchester comic Faizan Shah’s material makes light of growing up in an immigrant household with the mental health challenges it brings. Organiser Damion Larkin hosts as ever. Box office: 01904 612940 or lolcomedyclubs.co.uk.

Andy Kershaw: “Two-hour explosion of irresistible tropical dance music” at Milton Rooms, Malton

Declaring war on musical mediocrity: Andy Kershaw’s African, Caribbean & Latin Dance Night, Milton Rooms, Malton, November 8, 8pm

ANDY Kershaw, DJ pioneer, evangelist and Old Grey Whistle Test presenter, has brought global music to British audiences over more than three decades of programmes on BBC Radio 1 and Radio 3. His obsession with finding new music has resulted in a 7.5 ton record collection garnered from visits to 97 countries in pursuit of new and exciting sounds.

His one-man war on musical mediocrity promises a two-hour explosion of irresistible tropical dance music. Folk-infused York buskers and party, pub and festival covers’ band Hyde Family Jam support. Box office: 01653 692240 or themiltonrooms.com.

Rag’n’Bone Man: Returning to Scarborough Open Air Theatre next summer

Gig announcements of the week: TK Maxx presents Scarborough Open Air Theatre, UB40 featuring Ali Campbell, July 6, and Rag’n’Bone Man, July 11 2025

“I THINK I’ve got the best reggae band in the world,” says UB40 legend Ali Campbell, who last played Scarborough OAT in 2021. “They are all seasoned musicians, who have spent all their lives in professional bands, and I feel so confident with them.” Support acts will be Bitty McLean and Pato Banton.

Triple BRIT Award and Ivor Novello Award winner Rag’n’Bone Man, alias Rory Graham,  will follow up his 2023 Scarborough OAT show with a return next summer in the wake of his third album, What Do You Believe In? entering the charts at number three last Friday. His special guest will be Elles Bailey. Tickets for both shows go on sale at 9am on Friday at ticketmaster.co.uk.