''Mary Rose'' is a play by J. M. Barrie, who is best known for '' Peter Pan''. It was first produced in April 1920 at the Haymarket Theatre, London, with incidental music specially composed by

Norman O'Neill Norman Houston O'Neill (14 March 1875 – 3 March 1934) was an English composer and conductor of Irish background who specialised largely in works for the theatre. Life O'Neill was born at 16 Young Street in Kensington, London, the youngest son ...

.''Everybody's magazine,'' Volume 43, page 30
December 1920. The play was produced in New York that year. Later it received revivals in New York in 2007 and in London in 2012.

Plot

This is the fictional story of Mary Rose, a girl who vanishes twice. As a child, Mary Rose was taken by her father to a remote Scottish island. While she is briefly out of her father's sight, Mary Rose vanishes. The entire island is searched exhaustively. Twenty-one days later, Mary Rose reappears as mysteriously as she disappeared...but she shows no effects of having been gone for three weeks, and she has no knowledge of any gap or missing time. Years later, as a young wife and mother, the adult Mary Rose persuades her husband to take her to the same island. Again she vanishes: this time for a period of decades. When she is found again, she is not a single day older and has no awareness of the passage of time. In the interim, her son has grown to adulthood and is now physically older than his mother.

Productions

Barrie, who normally wrote with his right hand, wrote ''Mary Rose'' with his left hand due to a "writer's cramp". ''Mary Rose'' first opened in London at the

Haymarket Theatre The Theatre Royal Haymarket (also known as Haymarket Theatre or the Little Theatre) is a West End theatre on Haymarket in the City of Westminster which dates back to 1720, making it the third-oldest London playhouse still in use. Samuel Foote ...

, running from 22 April 1920 to 26 February 1921, with Fay Compton as Mary Rose, a role which was written for her by Barrie. It was revived (with many of the same cast still in place) in 1926. ''Mary Rose'' opened in New York on Broadway at the Empire Theatre, running from 22 December 1920 to April 1921. Direction was by

Ben Iden Payne Ben Iden Payne (September 5, 1881 – April 6, 1976), also known as B. Iden Payne, was an English actor, director and teacher. Active in professional theater for seventy years, he helped the first modern Repertory Theatre in the United Kingdom, was ...

with

Ruth Chatterton Ruth Chatterton (December 24, 1892 – November 24, 1961) was an American stage, film, and television actress, aviator and novelist. She was at her most popular in the early to mid-1930s, and in the same era gained prominence as an aviator, ...

as Mary Rose. A revival ran on Broadway at the ANTA Playhouse, running from 4 March 1951 to 16 March 1951. The play was directed by John Stix, produced by

Helen Hayes Helen Hayes MacArthur ( Brown; October 10, 1900 – March 17, 1993) was an American actress whose career spanned 80 years. She eventually received the nickname "First Lady of American Theatre" and was the second person and first woman to have w ...

, with Mary Rose played by

Bethel Leslie Jane Bethel Leslie (August 3, 1929 – November 28, 1999) was an American actress and screenwriter. In her career spanning half a century, she was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award and a Laurel Award in 1964, a Tony Award in 1986, and a Cable ...

. The play was revived

off-Broadway An off-Broadway theatre is any professional theatre venue in New York City with a seating capacity between 100 and 499, inclusive. These theatres are smaller than Broadway theatres, but larger than off-off-Broadway theatres, which seat fewer tha ...

by the Vineyard Theater in 2007. The play was produced in a London revival in 2012 at Riverside Studios.

Music

Norman O'Neill's original music for the 1920 production gained widespread acclaim. At the end of the first night Barrie greeted the composer with "Well, O'Neill, I think we have made a success", and later wrote him a letter that "it was a lucky day for me when you had that inspiration." Barrie also described the effect of the music in the stage directions of the published text, effectively incorporating the music into the play. Fay Compton wrote of "that beautiful, haunting music which in turn inspired us; the tremendous debt of gratitude I owed to that music I can never hope to repay."

Ernest Irving Kelville Ernest Irving (6 November 1878 – 24 October 1953) was an English music director, conductor and composer, primarily remembered as a theatre musician in London between the wars, and for his key contributions to British film music as m ...

compared a performance of ''Mary Rose'' without O'Neill's music to "a dance by a fairy with a wooden leg."

Reception

In 1921, the play was included in ''Best Plays of 1920–1921''. The ''

New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

'' reviewer called the 2007 revival of the play an "elegantly plotted ghost story". He noted, "The play is in many ways a more mature and mournful reworking of themes Barrie explored in the tale of the boy Peter Pan who refused to grow up. Time is seen as a quiet despoiler of happiness and innocence, and the lure of another world unblemished by its passing has an irresistible seduction." Of its London revival in 2012, a reviewer wrote that the play "...reveals a somewhat uncomfortable preoccupation with childhood innocence extending some of the themes of eterPan; the child who cannot grow up, and meditation on death and loss."

Adaptations

Alfred Hitchcock Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock (13 August 1899 – 29 April 1980) was an English filmmaker. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential figures in the history of cinema. In a career spanning six decades, he directed over 50 featur ...

had seen the play as a young man in its original production. Later in his career as a film director, he wanted to film it, asking Jay Presson Allen to write a screenplay after she had written the screenplay for Hitchcock's film '' Marnie'' (1964). However, Hitchcock was under contract to

Universal Pictures Universal Pictures (legally Universal City Studios LLC, also known as Universal Studios, or simply Universal; common metonym: Uni, and formerly named Universal Film Manufacturing Company and Universal-International Pictures Inc.) is an Ameri ...

at the time, and the studio believed that the project was "too troubling", with not enough commercial appeal, so would not approve production. In 2016, a radio play adaptation of Mary Rose was broadcast on

BBC Radio 3 BBC Radio 3 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC. It replaced the BBC Third Programme in 1967 and broadcasts classical music and opera, with jazz, world music, Radio drama, drama, High culture, culture and the arts ...

. It was adapted and directed by Abigail le Fleming with music composed and performed by cellist Laura Moody. In 2017, Adaptive Books published the novel ''Mary Rose'' by Geoffrey Girard, a modern retelling based on the original play and Hitchcock's plans. ''Booklist'' gave the novel a starred review, calling the adaptation "a ghost story that should be suggested to a wide range of readers." In 2022, a musical adaptation of Mary Rose opened in Chicago, with book and lyrics by Ed Rutherford and music and lyrics by Jeff Bouthiette, produced by Black Button Eyes Productions. Currently a film titled "The Island Between Tides" starring Paloma Kwiatkowski, Donal Logue, David Mazouz, Camille Sullivan, and Adam Beach is filming in Prince Rupert, Canada.

Notes