Malory Towers at Liverpool Playhouse

High jinks and high drama are on the curriculum at Liverpool Playhouse as Emma Rice Company’s sensational musical adaptation of Enid Blyton’s classic Malory Towers hits the stage as part of a new UK tour.

The play is adapted from Blyton’s series of six books which she wrote in the late 1940s and early 1950s, drawing inspiration from her daughter’s time at boarding school. Here, Emma Rice combines elements from the books and updates the material, starting with a modern day framing device which sees a schoolgirl knocked unconscious and transported back in time to Blyton’s post-war era.

The script nods knowingly to the audience, without losing that warm nostalgic edge as Darrell Rivers (Robyn Sinclair) lines up on a train station platform ready to be whisked away for her first day with her classmates at the eponymous clifftop Cornish boarding school. There she meets the domineering Gwendoline Lacey (Rebecca Collingwood), the kind-hearted Sally Hope (Bethany Wooding), and an anxious Mary Lou (Eden Barrie), setting the stage for a musical that explores evergreen childhood themes of friendship, bullying, and just a little mischief.

The songs themselves are staged with energy and invention, consisting of a combination of poignant period classics such as Pat Ballard’s “Mr Sandman” and Benny Goodman’s “Sing Sing Sing”, alongside original numbers composed by Ian Ross with lyrics by Rice.

The Times has praised the show as “big-hearted” while The Guardian described this adaptation as “enchanting”, noting the quietly radical intentions in revealing this world of dormitory drama, midnight feasts and dangerous storms on the Cornish coastline. Is Malory Towers the original Girl Power story? 

As Rice herself puts it: “Here’s to ‘Good strong women that the world can lean on’. My, in these terrifying and divided times we need that more than ever, don’t we?”