Rebecca

Theatre Royal Brighton, New Road, Monday, September 28, to Saturday, October 3

“BRING it on!” is Emma Rice’s response to the new job she is about to take on at London’s Globe Theatre in April 2016, replacing Dominic Dromgoole as artistic director.

Before then she is taking her own Cornish theatre company Kneehigh back out on the road with their take on Daphne Du Maurier’s between-the-wars classic thriller Rebecca.

“It was long overdue – I couldn’t believe we hadn’t done a Du Maurier story before,” says Rice, whose company has previously reimagined Noel Coward’s Brief Encounter, folk tale The Red Shoes and Powell And Pressburger’s A Matter Of Life And Death for the stage.

With this take on Rebecca she went back to the original novel and Du Maurier’s own theatrical adaptation, sidestepping Hitchcock’s Hollywood movie version.

The story follows an unnamed naive young bride as she starts a new life in grand country house Manderley, having married rich widower Maxim de Winter after a whirlwind romance.

But she soon finds herself living under the shadow of her predecessor, the titular Rebecca.

Rice has brought a sense of place to the story by incorporating traditional sea shanties into the action.

“Cornwall is a character in many of Du Maurier’s books,” she says. “With Rebecca there is this amazing and sinister call of the sea – as anyone who lives by the sea knows it is both a wonderful and terrifying place.

“We found a historical wealth of folk songs that call out justice, fear and are pretty sexy as well.

“It is an elemental piece, it is important to put that right at the heart of it, otherwise it becomes a little bit Downton Abbey with all these rich people in a house.”

She sees the book itself as morally ambiguous, and a feminist work.

“Du Maurier was amazing, this woman walking on the beach coming up with her ideas,” she says. “When I did Brief Encounter I wanted to be friends with Noel Coward. I think if I met Du Maurier I would be scared – I would have my eye on the door!

“Du Maurier doesn’t use women to just send a message, she paints very complicated, damaged people, which is what we are. She is post-modern in her way. She has no agenda, she says we are all struggling around in her dark world.”

Overshadowing the whole story is a character who is never seen on stage – Rebecca herself.

“She’s a life-size character who can do everything,” says Rice. “It’s amazing to have this offstage character that is so powerful – and that nobody has a bad word to say against her.

“There is nothing romantic about the second Mrs de Winter’s marriage. It’s very disturbing how she loses her identity overnight.”

Behind all of this is the dark clouds gathering across the world. Rebecca was penned in 1938 as Hitler’s Nazis were on the rise, and the Second World War seemed almost inevitable.

The remnants of the happier 1920s come in the form of Giles and Beatrice, the carefree couple who look like they come straight out of the Bloomsbury set.

“That period between the wars has always fascinated me,” says Rice. “There’s a sense of foreboding in the air and dark times ahead. Rebecca captures that perfectly with the danger and darkness that will come out and change lives.”

The central characters in the story presented tricky challenges for Rice – not least the unnamed narrator herself.

“We auditioned a lot of young women,” she says. “They were all beautiful and fabulous, but she had to be complicated. She’s young and doesn’t know what is going on – but that doesn’t mean she’s simple and stupid. She is much stronger through the play – she rather disappears in the last third of the book.”

Similarly Rice tried to move away from demonising fearsome housekeeper Mrs Danvers, who goes so far as to encourage her new boss to kill herself by jumping through a window.

“I don’t think she’s evil,” says Rice. “She is deeply in grief. She loved Rebecca so much. She wears the grief that Maxim doesn’t.

“The story is told through the eyes of the second Mrs de Winter so she is still scary.

“I really do feel the play explores the situation Mrs de Winter finds herself at the end of the book in more detail – what she feels when she discovers what has really happened, and how they will all live with it.”

Starts 7.45pm, 2.30pm matinees Thurs and Sat, tickets from £10. Call 08448 717650.