Rebecca
Alhambra Theatre
Bradford/Touring
4/5

WITH one of the most famous opening lines in literature and an Oscar-winning film adaptation by Alfred Hitchcock, it’s not for the faint-hearted to turn for artistic inspiration to Daphne du Maurier’s 1938 Gothic thriller Rebecca.

But where others have given the novel a literal interpretation, the Kneehigh company has brought to it its usual mix of irreverence.

This is still undoubtedly the story of the “other woman” — a study in jealousy, as it’s subtitled — but it’s one with a modern-day twist and an at times affectionately mocking tone.

Here the past and present are vividly entwined in Leslie Travers’s set design — verging on the surreal — which incorporates the burned-out shell of a stately home, the body of Rebecca buried under a sailing boa, and a coastline that’s populated by fishermen in sou’westers who break into sea shanties.

These musical interludes, by turn brooding and darkly comic, echo the knife-edge twists in the play’s mood.

The threatening coastal scenes that open the play rapidly turn to farce with the appearance of overbearing relatives Beatrice and Giles (Lizzie Winkler and Andy Williams).

Forming a chorus-line welcome for their new sister-in-law, their brash upper-class snobbery contrasts with the vulnerability of the newly-wed Mrs de Winter.

They’re not the only characters to be drawn in broad brush strokes, with the uncontained exuberance of footman Robert (a show-stealing Katy Owen) and disapproving housekeeper Mrs Danvers (an unconvincing Emily Raymond) also played to type.

They form a static backdrop against which the the novel’s narrator undergoes a transformation, with Imogen Sage blossoming from a wallflower to a confident, sensual woman who starts to adopt the mannerisms of her dead rival.

Emma Rice’s adaptation may lack some of the novel’s subtleties but it more than compensates with its unbounded energy and the empowering awakening of Mrs de Winter.

Tours until December 5, details: kneehigh.co.uk

Review by Susan Darlington