It is hard to go past the opening line of Daphne du Maurier’s Gothic 1938 novel, Rebecca which spawned many films, plays and in this case a 2006 Austrian musical now translated into English. One of the problems of the novel is that it is 432 pages long in paperback, so there is plenty of story to be covered, as seen by the 39 songs. Hitchcock, in his 1940 film, with Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine changed the story to fit the screen. The Director Alejandro Bonatto has done the same but as more versions are made so the story becomes diluted and sanitised.

The play opens with Lauren Jones as I in the book as the narrator singing the opening number at a hotel in Monte Carlo where she is a companion to Mrs van Hopper (Shirley Jameson).  I becomes the Second Mrs de Winter.  She meets, falls in love and marries Maxim de Winter (Richard Carson). Maxim is a wealthy widower whose ancestral house is Manderley but he cannot overcome the loss of his first wife Rebecca.