New staging of Enid Blyton's Malory Towers story suggests 'tomboy' Bill is really transgender

When Enid Blyton created the Malory Towers stories, her cast of schoolgirl characters included a tomboy called Bill.

A new stage musical based on the boarding school adventures will suggest that there was more to Bill's expression of gender identity than the books could say.

Emma Rice, the former director of Shakespeare’s Globe who has adapted Malory Towers for the stage, has cast a non-binary actor, Vinnie Heaven, in the role and said that Bill - full name Wilhelmina, and described in the books as looking “exactly like a boy” - may have been transgender or gay but unable to express that in the 1940s.

“Bill is portrayed as a tomboy in the books but, thanks to the progress we have made as a society, people like Bill are now able to express their identity in other ways,” Rice said.

“It’s very moving to look back and see people who may have been transgender or gay or a member of another community at a time when there simply wasn’t the language to talk about it.”

Rice has also cast non-white actors in some roles “to more accurately reflect the times we live in” but has otherwise stuck closely to the stories, with their midnight feasts and jolly japes. The post-war 1940s setting remains.

The show opens at The Passenger Shed in Bristol on July 19 before embarking on a UK tour. It is produced by Wise Children, the company that Rice set up after exiting the Globe.

Rice said she loved Blyton’s strong characters and the values she instilled in the Malory Towers girls. “Blyton may not have thought of herself as a feminist, but feminism is at the heart of Malory Towers. The girls lead their best lives in an environment of freedom and adventure… To me, they are little revolutionaries,” she said.

Heaven, a writer, producer and performer, recently staged a solo show called She’s A Good Boy, exploring non-binary gender.

The character of Bill appeared in the third Malory Towers book, arriving at the Cornish clifftop school on her horse, Thunder. The first mention of her comes from classmate Darrell Rivers who, told that Bill has seven brothers, remarks: “I should think she’s half a boy herself then.”

Blyton describes Bill as “somebody who, except for the school tunic, looked exactly like a boy”, with short hair and a “boyish grin”.

The character announces: “I’ve never in my life been called Wilhelmina. Ever. It’s a frightful name. Everyone calls me Bill… If you all start calling me Wilhelmina I shall be miserable. I shan’t feel I’m myself.”

Bill is very similar to Blyton’s most famous tomboy, George in the Famous Five books, who also refuses to answer to Georgina: “I shall only answer if you call me GEorge. I hate being a girl. I won’t be,” she says in Five on a Treasure Island.