Long before “finding your authentic self” and “speaking your truth” entered everyday parlance, Lucy Maud Montgomery imagined a heroine who chose exactly that path. That hero is Valancy Stirling, and she is the star of The Blue Castle, one of very few novels that Lucy Maud Montgomery wrote for adults, and the only one that she set in Ontario, where she lived most of her life.
A century after Montgomery wrote The Blue Castle in Leaskdale, Ontario, director Jackie Bellamy is returning that story to this place where it first took shape. This month, RyleePuss Productions’ The Blue Castle: A Musical , by Hank Stinson and Helen MacRae, transforms the historic Leaskdale Church into both stage and living history. The show invites audiences to encounter Montgomery’s most quietly radical heroine in the place where the author’s husband was the minister and where she herself worshipped, taught Sunday school, directed amateur theatricals … and wrote the novel.
Montgomery’s bravest heroine
Commissioned by the Lucy Maud Montgomery Society of Ontario to mark the novel’s centenary, the production celebrates not only Montgomery’s legacy, but also the enduring relevance of 29-year old Valancy Stirling, who is branded an undesirable old maid by her mother and extended Stirling clan. Timid and constrained by family expectations, Valancy resolves to live on her own terms after receiving a devastating medical diagnosis—leading her toward independence, agency, love and self-discovery that feel remarkably modern.
“There is definitely that theme of finding your own voice and finding your own pathway through life, and making the decisions that make you happy,” Bellamy notes. “That’s a timeless theme.” Andrea MacKenzie, who plays the production’s Mrs. Stirling, is an Associate Professor and the Chair of Writing at York University, and also a Montgomery scholar. She goes further, pronouncing that Valancy may be Montgomery’s bravest heroine. Unlike the more famous Anne who comes to Green Gables and makes a home there, Valancy is “a young woman who is oppressed and repressed by her family, and who finds the courage to leave and find her identity, her life and enjoyment—which she’s never had before.”
From novel to musical
Rather than attempting a literal page-by-page adaptation of the novel, Stinson honours Montgomery’s emotional truth. His pastoral score blends folk colours, echoes of Gilbert and Sullivan, and lively period dance music. The adaptation also embraces the novel’s landscapes. Songs celebrating Mistawis and Barney’s cabin evoke the Muskoka landscape and the broader natural world that Montgomery rendered so vividly. As a result, the environment remains an active presence, rather than mere backdrop.
Even as the musical condenses Montgomery’s novel, Bellamy says Stinson carefully preserves many of the lines that readers treasure. One rehearsal found her pausing Sean Kenney, who plays Barney Snaith, after he inadvertently paraphrased Barney’s celebrated declaration of love: “I want your body and your spirit and your companionship.” Bellamy insisted the wording remain exactly as Montgomery wrote it. The novel is less known than the Anne novels, but when they discover it, readers tend to fall in love with it. “There are people who are coming to see the show that know that line in their heart,” she declares firmly.
MacKenzie believes one of Stinson’s greatest achievements is the adaptation’s dramaturgy. Rather than simply omitting material, he finds theatrical equivalents for Montgomery’s storytelling. Barney’s carefully layered identity—and the family’s eventual realization of who he really is—occupy many pages in the novel. On stage, those revelations are achieved through what MacKenzie calls “an ingenious device.” Bellamy also points to the arrival of the village mail as a mechanism that allows information to ripple quickly through Deerwood. These creative features preserve the surprise and the humour of Montgomery’s plotting, without sacrificing the musical’s momentum.
Capturing the characters
In Bellamy’s view, the same kind of economy allows even supporting characters to retain meaningful emotional journeys. For instance, Mrs. Stirling begins the musical fiercely protective of family status and determined to control her daughter. “When Valancy begins to rebel… this first throws Mrs. Stirling,” she explains. As Valancy becomes more self-assured, hope peeks out that mother and daughter may finally begin to understand one another. “Perhaps,” she notes, “we see a new relationship beginning between Mrs. Stirling and her daughter.”
MacKenzie also points to the complexity of Valancy’s mysterious love interest Barney, who must (literally) embody several different identities at once. Bellamy believes actor Sean Kenney successfully captures all those shifting layers, while revealing Barney’s vulnerability only when the story requires it.
Bellamy found an equally compelling Valancy in Seline Berish. Although Berish first read the novel while preparing for auditions, she quickly felt a personal connection to the role. “What really struck me about Valancy… is just being brave,” she explains, before candidly discussing her own parallel need for such courage. After her divorce in her early thirties, she found herself rebuilding her life from the ground up. “It was one of the worst things that happened,” she reflects, “but it was also one of the best things that could have happened to me.” Like Valancy, she came to see profound disruption as the beginning of a new life rather than its end.
She also recognized herself in the novel’s quieter examination of beauty and self-worth. Growing up as a plus-size woman, she felt for a long time that she lay outside of conventional standards of attractiveness. This made it difficult to imagine herself deserving of love—in exactly the same way that Valancy struggles to believe that Barney could genuinely love her. In the end, Berish believes the heroine’s greatest discovery is not romance, but self-acceptance: “The biggest thing is that… who she is at her core is good enough. She doesn’t need to be a different person. She can be exactly who she is. That is more than enough.”
This emotional transformation is central to Bellamy’s direction. Because a two-hour musical cannot include every scene from a 200-page novel, a lot of character development happens physically, rather than through dialogue or description. Thus, Valancy begins the show with lowered eyes, hesitant speech and nervous gestures … before gradually inhabiting her own confidence and assertiveness. And Berish credits her director’s balanced approach for helping her inhabit the evolving role of Valancy: “Jackie as a director has really given me a lot of both direction and space.”
Embracing Montgomery’s reality … but moving beyond Anne
The magic of the Leaskdale location deepens every rehearsal. On more than one occasion, the cast has stood in Montgomery’s study in the manse where she lived and wrote … then returned to the neighbouring church to practice speaking aloud some of the words she wrote. Each rehearsal reminds MacKenzie that Montgomery herself once directed young people in that same space.
That said, the church presents some key practical challenges—including no curtain, wings or theatrical lighting. However, in a proof of the adage that creativity loves constraint, Bellamy has embraced these limitations. Scene changes have become part of the storytelling, she explains, and she welcomes the forced intimacy, which erases the usual divide between audience and performers.
When the production of The Blue Castle was announced, Bellamy was amazed to hear from Montgomery readers around the world. Their message was grateful and consistent: “Finally, finally, we’re moving past Anne and into somebody new!”
Perhaps that response is inevitable, but the discovery that awaits audiences is bigger than simple novelty. For Valancy’s courage does not lie in grand gestures, but in discovering that a life shaped by her own values is possible. And 100 years after Montgomery first imagined Valancy’s journey in Leaskdale, it will speak to theatre audiences—from that exact same spot—with renewed power and relevance.
The Blue Castle: A Musical , presented by Ryleepuss Productions, runs July 3–5 and July 10–12 at the historic Leaskdale Church. In keeping with adapter Hank Stinson’s wishes, royalties from the production are being donated to the Red Cross in support of Ukrainian relief. Tickets are available through starticketing.com.
© Arpita Ghosal, Sesaya Arts Magazine 2026
