Mary Rose (play)

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. The play was produced in New York that year. Later it received revivals in New York in 2007 and in London in 2012.

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.

Mary Rose first opened in London at the Haymarket Theatre, running from April 22, 1920 to February 26, 1921, with Fay Compton as Mary Rose, a role which was written for her by Barrie. Barrie, who normally wrote with his right hand, wrote Mary Rose with his left hand due to a "writer's cramp".

Mary Rose opened that year in New York on Broadway at the Empire Theatre, running from December 22, 1920 to April 1921. Direction was by Ben Iden Payne with Ruth Chatterton as Mary Rose.

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

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

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