EMMA Rice’s musical adaptation of Enid Blyton’s Malory Towers was one of the victims of COVID, opening in Bristol in autumn 2019. After a stop in Devon, the planned tour was scuppered. Now, happily, it is back on the road – refined, framed and better than ever, starting a new nine-venue tour at Bath.

The story of Malory Towers, the Cornish boarding school for girls where the teaching includes academic lessons and sport but most importantly how to become a good, thoughtful, honourable and dependable human being, is very close to the director’s heart. Emma Rice’s mother came from Holywell near Evershot, and travelled to Lord Digby’s School (founded in 1680) in Sherborne by train and bus every day. I have to admit that my own school days were not unlike those at Malory Towers, though some years after the immediately post-war setting of Blyton’s book.

This adaptation has not only Rice’s signature energy, quirky inspiration and sure-fire theatrical instinct, but a set by Lez Brotherston (of Matthew Bourne ballet fame), sound and video expertise from Simon Baker and choreography by Alistair David, not to mention music by Ian Ross. And instead of a live headmistress, the persuasively reassuring tones of Sheila Hancock as Miss Grayling, seen only as a shadow outside the dormitory, is in charge of the Towers.

This version starts in the 2020s, with a group of students squabbling in school until an unkind swipe knocks one of them to the ground. The teachers are called ….

Like Harry Potter and like Daisy Pulls it Off, the real story begins on the first day of a new term as pupils meet on the train. Straight away, plucky Darrell Rivers – a girl who never thought she could possibly go to a place like Malory Towers – meets up with Alicia the joker, the gawky, awkward Mary Lou and the spiteful, entitled Gwendoline. Arriving at the school (is that Lulworth Castle?), they settle into a life of lessons and adventures and friendship, but soon discover the petty jealousies lurking. When the Hon. Wilhelmina (better known as Bill), turns up, it’s on horseback, and from then on Thunder is at the heart of the action.

The show encompasses the swing hits of the 1940s as well as some very well sung original songs, with Irene (Stephanie Hockley) at the piano. Then there is the storm, when Mary Lou falls over the vertiginous cliff, only to be saved by Darrell, and then by the Thunderous Bill. And it all becomes clear why Gwendoline is so very nasty. But not before Shakespeare’s own Midsummer Night’s Dream is plundered for a play within a play.

This manages to be happy-ever-after without incredible sentimentality, and the moral lessons are much more than box-ticking, self-satisfied hot air. It’s a lovely show, full of fun and excitement, performed by Eden Barrie as Mary Lou, Molly Cheesley as Alicia, Rebecca Collingwood returning to the role of Gwendoline, Robyn Sinclair (who hopefully will return to Bath at Christmas in the wonderful Emma Rice production of A Child’s Christmas in Wales at the Ustinov) as Darrell, Bethany Wooding as Sally and Zoe West as an entirely convincing Bill Robinson.

See it if you can, on the tour that continues to Coventry, Brighton, Leeds, Manchester, Liverpool, Cambridge, Richmond, Guildford and the Alexandra Palace in London.

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Photographs by Steve Tanner