1 – 9 May
Emma Rice cut her creative teeth with Kneehigh Theatre on the small-scale touring circuit, playing in a range of challenging indoor and outdoor locations such as village halls, castle grounds, cliff tops, and so on. It has informed her work as a director ever since, even though now her productions have access to sophisticated technology and larger budgets. Despite the luxury of a purpose-built venue, Malory Towers is infused with the ethos of creating surprising and impactful drama often with minimal resources. We are treated to a range of eye-catching effects, animations, back projections, puppetry, mimed action precisely timed with sound effects, as when the girls board their train, slamming imaginary doors, sliding open windows, or pulling on a light switch. It’s all part of the fun of shoehorning a distillation of several books into a two-hour show. The famous cliff-top scene (from the second book) has Wilhelmina ‘Bill’ (Zoe West) riding to the rescue (even though she first appears in the third book). The character has echoes of tomboy George (Georgina) from Blyton’s Famous Five series.
There is music everywhere, including stunningly beautiful polyphonic vocal arrangements by Nigel Lilley. A piano and violin keep up a more-or-less constant accompaniment to the action, occasionally supplemented by an accordion or percussion. Some of the songs are classics made famous by the likes of the Andrews Sisters and help to transport us back to the late 1940s.
Rice’s adaptation captures the essence of Blyton’s narrative, whilst also blending aspects of different characters and simplifying their psychology. Darrell (Robyn Sinclair) has a driving propensity for anger, which sets up a misunderstanding between the girls. Mary-Lou (Eden Barrie), the well-meaning naïve girl comes across as more one-dimensionally dense than Blyton’s original, who retains some ability to reflect and acquire insight. Similarly, Gwendoline (Rebecca Collingwood) is a lot more unremittingly mean than the conflicted soul of the books. However, this choice sets up the most powerful moment in the play, when Gwen learns her father has died (in the book, he just got sick). After all the raucous shenanigans and laughter, there was complete silence in the auditorium as we hear a disembodied Miss Grayling (Sheila Hancock) explain that Gwen’s father never fully recovered from his wartime experience.
The choice to make all the adults physically absent placed the focus squarely on the girls and their interactions as they struggle with their selfish urges and their need for acceptance, eventually groping towards greater self-knowledge. The cruelty of a line like ‘no one will miss you’, provided a moment where the audience’s reproving ‘aah’ seemed to influence the girls and provoke pause for thought. There was humour that clearly targetted adults, as with the play on the rather anachronistic insult, ‘pillock’, and Pollock (as in Jackson, the artist). The biggest laugh of the evening came with a nicely understated comment that life for men is pretty much the same as for women except that things are easier for them and they earn more money. The irony of this story of empowerment in an almost exclusively female world coming up against the harsh realities of contemporary life was suddenly laid bare
Rice’s bookending the long-vanished time of the story with an opening and closing scene set in the present-day saved the production from catering exclusively to nostalgia. Even so, the largely adult audience (probably of a certain age and income bracket) seemed captivated by this reach back to their own childhoods played out on Lez Brotherston’s nicely adaptable set. The appreciative standing ovation at the end revealed an auditorium relatively devoid of real children.
★★★★☆. Peter Jordan, 8 May 2026
Photography credit: Steve Tanner
