When Alice Sebold's novel The Lovely Bones hit the shelves of bookstores across the globe in 2002 it quickly became a literary sensation.

Praised by critics for its inventive handling of a terrible tragedy, it became an instant bestseller.

It was natural, then, that Hollywood would want a piece of the action, and Lord Of The Rings director Peter Jackson personally bought the rights to make a film of the story of Susie Salmon, a 12-year-old girl who is abducted, raped and murdered in Pennsylvania in 1973.

The twist is that the tale is told by Susie as narrator - after she has died. So it's not so much about the crime itself, more about the aftermath.

Susie watches events on earth unfold in her own private afterlife, as her family and friends come to terms with the loss and try to bring the killer to justice.

The Lovely Bones
The Lovely Bones

Jackson's film version was a let down, though. Lacking the subtlety of the novel, it veered heavy-handedly from horrible violence to syrupy sentimentality.

This is a trap that the stage version of the story - adapted by British playwright Bryony Lavery - does not fall into.

Director Melly Still says: "It's one of these celebrated coming of age stories with a twist.

"Susie, once she's in her afterlife, or in her heaven, she can't stop watching life on earth and she finds it unbearable because her family are suffering so much."

Susie herself is played by Charlotte Beaumont, perhaps best know for her role as Chloe Latimer in the celebrated TV drama Broadchurch.

She says of Susie: "Her heaven is high school, it doesn't go beyond that. And she's got all this hope and this desire to discover. And it presents people in a very non-judgemental way, and Alice does that in the book, and Bryony's captured that in the play.

Keith Dunphy as Mr Harvey with Charlotte Beaumont as Susie in The Lovely Bones
Keith Dunphy as Mr Harvey with Charlotte Beaumont as Susie in The Lovely Bones

"Susie's watching them from heaven, but it's all very human and relatable."

Mirroring, quite literally, Susie's unusual situation, is the inventive set, which allows the audience to experience the action from both sides of the cosmic divide.

Melly says: "Ana (Ines Jabares-Pita), who's designed the piece, has come up with this extraordinary installation.

"And it allows us to see things from different perspectives, which is sort of what Susie, the protagonist, is always doing."

Ana said: "We've created almost like a massive installation, rather than a set design, and that's going to help us to create all sorts of magic images, of appearing and disappearing, and putting things upside-down and creating floating images."

The set is crucial to bringing the story to life and allowing its unconventional premise to work. And work it does - critically acclaimed already, and sure to break your heart in many different ways, The Lovely Bones triumphs on stage just as much as it does on the page.

Charlotte says: "It's such a beautiful story, and I really like how it's not about the murder. It's about the aftermath of that and the grief process of that, and how that affects families."

The Lovely Bones is on at The Lowry from Tuesday October 15 to Saturday, October 19. Tickets are priced from £15.50 to £29.50. Box office: tickets.thelowry.com or 0343 208 6000.

 

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