Haunting tale of Rebeccais pre-Christmas treat

DAPHNE du Maurier’s Rebecca is the pre-Christmas challenge for the Bury Players who offer the stage version at Bury Village Hall on December 2, 3 and 4 at 7.30pm (tickets on 01798 831468).

Nicol Kinrade is the director for the show which features Lynne Gardner as the sinister Mrs Danvers.

Rebecca is the tale of the shy ladies’ companion, staying in Monte Carlo with her stuffy employer, who meets the wealthy Maxim de Winter and falls in love with him.

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They marry and return to Manderlay, Maxim’s large country estate in Cornwall where the new Mrs de Winter’s life is soon overshadowed by Rebecca, the first Mrs de Winter who died, so it is believed, in a boating accident the year before.

The second Mrs de Winter clashes with the housekeeper, Mrs Danvers who remains fiercely loyal to her previous employer. It emerges that Rebecca still has a strange hold on everyone at Manderlay.

“It’s a play about obsession and intrigue and the past catching up,” says Lynne who embodies much of that obsession in Mrs Danvers.

“She isn’t actually mad, but... She has been with the family since Rebecca was a child and she has worked for Rebecca.

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“She doesn’t like the new Mrs de Winter coming in. I think that’s when she starts to flip!

“We have got a very good experienced cast with the three new members.

“It’s always good to have new faces in the team, and the play is coming together extremely well.”

Inevitably, a well-known piece carries a weight of expectation, much as it did when the Players did The Forsyte Saga: “But we are not straying with it.

“We are doing it as it should be and it is very dramatic.”

The Players do two plays a year, and this time next year they will be doing panto, a route they go down every other year. Next spring the play will be Love Begins At 50.