The Sudbury Savoyards bring J.M. Barrie's beguiling play Mary Rose to the stage in a narrated reading version Barrie himself created. It is the tale of a puckish English tomboy who visits a Scottish island as a child. The play begins as a mystery, transforms into a comedy, and then ends as an entrancing ghost story. The play is framed by scenes in 1919, with three flashbacks to the past between the scenes in the present.

Barrie is best known as the creator of Peter Pan. If Mary Rose herself is a sister to Peter Pan, then her mysterious island is akin to Never-Neverland. Known locally as The Island That Likes To Be Visited, the island falls in love with some visitors and has the power to call to them, across time and space. Wherever they are, whenever the Island calls them, they must answer its call, and they vanish... only to reappear, a day or a lifetime later, bewildered by a world that has grown old while they have not aged. Eternal youth brings joy and heartache.

Mary Rose features (in order of appearance): Ed Fell as J.M. Barrie; Marion Leeds Carroll as Mrs. Otery, a gentlewoman managing the Morland estate; Jon Saul as Harry Blake, Simon and Mary Rose's lost son; Laurel Martin in the title role; Gianna Melone-Sardella and Craig Howard as Mary Rose's parents, Fanny and James Morland; Mike Lague as the Morlands' friend and clergyman, Reverend George Amy; Tony Parkes as Simon Blake, Mary Rose's beau and later her husband; and Dennis O'Brien as Cameron (a Scottish guide and later a Church of Scotland clergyman).

The reading is directed by Peter A. Stark.

Visit this evocative island with the Sudbury Savoyards on Friday evening, July 15 and Saturday evening, July 16, at 8 PM in Hawes Hall of the Sudbury United Methodist Church. Directions

Tickets are $12 for adults and $9 for students and seniors, and can be reserved by calling the Savoyards message line at 978-443-8811, or by , or purchased through the PayPal web-commerce site by clicking HERE. Phone or email reservations will be held at the door until 15 minutes before curtain. Space permitting, tickets will be available at the door.

The Sudbury Savoyards dedicate all proceeds to the relief of world hunger through the United Methodist Committee on Relief.