Jolly lacrosse sticks: wizard production brings Blyton boarding school to life
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Malory Towers from the novels by Enid Blyton and adapted and directed By Emma Rice, at the Belgrade Theatre as part of the UK Tour, from 12 - 16 May. Tour dates and venues below.
Review by Amanda Burden.
Three proof points that would have convinced 10-year-old me that adult me had absolutely won at life.
1. I saw Bananarama live (Godiva Festival, 2023. Potentially the best gig I’ve ever seen).
2. I once sat in the Southbank Centre with hundreds - literally hundreds - of fellow Robin of Sherwood fans watching old episodes and then hearing Phil Davis (King John) recount his filming memories. Admittedly, he was slightly bemused at the level of detail required by aficionados (“So…what type of adhesive did they use to stick your beard on in the fight scene?”).
3. And finally…attending Malory Towers, Enid Blyton’s 1940s Cornwall-based all-girls boarding school, presided over by dignified Miss Grayling and home to many a midnight feast, moonlit swim and general jolly jape.
OK, maybe I didn’t ATTEND this hallowed seat of learning. But I came near as dammit by watching the stage version of Malory Towers at the Belgrade Theatre. And what a peculiar, unexpectedly emotional and gloriously inventive experience it was.
For anyone raised on a strict literary diet of lacrosse sticks, ginger beer and terrifying French mistresses, seeing these characters materialise before you is surreal, like discovering the people from your childhood sticker album have Equity cards and stage combat training. Characters whose personalities emerged gradually over six books were now concentrated into two exuberant hours of theatre, giving the whole thing the energy of a lit camping stove left overnight in a common room (if you know, you know).
As a result, schoolgirl heroine Darrell Rivers (Robyn Sinclair) - all furious temper and moral righteousness - becomes less spirited child and more “teen most like to flip a dining table during GCSE results day”. Sally Hope (Bethany Wooding), Blyton’s dependable head girl-in-waiting, emerges as a neurotic control freak whose obsession with order suggests she would eventually grow up to run a GP’s reception. And Gwendoline (Rebecca Collingwood)? Let’s say…she made Lady Macbeth look like the Princess of Wales opening a garden centre.
Tomboy Bill (Zoe West), meanwhile, was reimagined less as the horse-mad eccentric of the books and more as a bluff Yorkshire lad who might nip outside for a Woodbine and quick fly with a kestrel. Witty trickster Alicia (Molly Cheesley) had a distinct Cornish burr which personally jarred with my own internal casting, as I’d always imagined her sounding like a sharp-elbowed West London girl who’d call everyone “darling” while quietly orchestrating bitchitude on an immense scale. Fabulous performances from all of them.
The strange thing about beloved childhood books is you don’t just read them; you direct them internally for decades.
Given this, Emma Rice’s production wisely leans into theatricality rather than attempting realism. Set designer Lez Brotherton’s staging is innovative, often using minimal props combined with sound effects, projections and physical movement to create entire worlds. A train journey is conjured through slamming imaginary carriage doors and whistles against a backdrop worthy of archetypical Blyton illustrator Eileen Soper. The swimming pool scenes use puppetry to magical effect, managing to be charming, funny and oddly convincing all at once. But most impressive of all is the famous cliff-top rescue, which arrives with a genuine sense of nail-biting peril. It’s proof that imaginative theatre can often achieve more than expensive effects ever could. And – if anyone had wondered for all these years – we now finally know what a prickly gorse bush looks like.
One of the cleverest decisions is to remove the teachers almost entirely from the stage. Instead, Miss Grayling exists as a kind of omniscient, disembodied presence, a bit like Leo McKern in The Prisoner. The effect is oddly haunting. Malory Towers itself begins to feel less like a school and more like a benevolent Picnic At Hanging Rock at the UK seaside.
What surprised me most, though, was how emotional parts of the show became. Beneath all the midnight feasts and French prep lies something unexpectedly timeless about loneliness, belonging and the savage loyalty of girlhood friendships. One scene involving Gwendoline and her father, never part of the original narrative, landed with a silence so poignant you could practically hear nostalgic Gen X women - including me - emotionally recalibrating all they knew of Blyton.
The audience itself was fascinating: visibly delighted adults reacting with the emotional investment usually reserved for reunions of minor 1990s indie bands, rubbing shoulders with an equally entranced generation of new fans. The riotous applause at the end suggested many of us weren’t simply watching a play. We were revisiting the people we were/ are when reading these books under the bedcovers with a torch long after bedtime.
And to be honest, ten-year-old me would have thought that was absolutely wizard.
MALORY TOWERS – UK TOUR
Theatre Royal Bath: 1 – 9 May. https://www.theatreroyal.org.uk/
Belgrade Theatre, Coventry: 12 – 16 May. https://www.belgrade.co.uk/
Leeds Playhouse: 27 – 30 May. https://www.leedsplayhouse.org.uk/
HOME Manchester: 2 – 13 June. https://homemcr.org/
Liverpool Playhouse: 16 – 20 June, https://everymanplayhouse.com/
Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford: 14 – 18 July, https://www.yvonne-arnaud.co.uk/
Alexandra Palace Theatre: 22 July – 2 August. https://www.alexandrapalace.com/
