The final drive to raise £1.5m to create a storytelling centre at the house where JM Barrie played as a child is to be marked with a performance of his "lost" play.

 

The play, Bandelero the Bandit, was written by the creator of Peter Pan when he was a pupil at Dumfries Academy and performed it there when he was 17, in 1877.

It is now being revived after nearly 140 years, as part of a campaign to create a children's literature and storytelling centre for Scotland, backed by Scottish Youth Theatre and actress Joanna Lumley.

Scottish Youth Theatre and Peter Pan Moat Brae Trust (PPMBT) are collaborating to bring a rehearsed reading of Bandelero the Bandit to the stage.

Barrie thought the script had been destroyed and wrote, with regret: "No page of it remains ..."

However a version of the script survived in the US and Bandelero will be read at the academy on June 26.

The 30-minute play will be acted by young actors who will also perform scenes from Peter Pan.

The event is part of this week's launch of PPMBT's final efforts to raise money needed to restore the nearby B-listed Moat Brae House and garden in Dumfries, where Barrie played as a child.

Joanna Lumley said: "This is such an exciting week for us, with Bandelero and the launch of our final fundraising push.

"Imagine, being able to revive JM Barrie's first play, which he thought was lost forever, so people can enjoy it again after all this time in the very place it was originally performed.

"Projects like this are exactly what the Peter Pan Moat Brae Trust is all about, and show the enormous value of creating a national children's literature and storytelling centre for Scotland.

"As a little boy it was Moat Brae House, and its lovely garden, where JM Barrie played and dreamed of Peter.

"We want to give thousands of children every year the same chance to be inspired, to make believe and also to discover the wonder of children's literature."

The appeal has already secured £4m of the £5.5m needed for the project.

The Trust hopes the derelict Georgian townhouse and garden can be reopened in 2017.

PPMBT and SYT's Bandelero project will last three years and will culminate in a full production of the play.

Fraser MacLeod, associate artistic director of the Glasgow-based SYT, said: "We are delighted to be able to return the first play of someone as iconic as JM Barrie to the stage, after such an enormous amount of time.

"The play is fascinating because it contains the beginnings of so many ideas and approaches that Barrie went on to expand and develop as his career flourished.

"We want young people today to see Bandelero like this, as the start of a career, and perhaps to think that if JM Barrie could have done it then, they can do it now."

Ronnie Jack, Edinburgh University Professor Emeritus in English Literature, came across the notebook containing Bandelero at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, in the US, while researching the correspondence of JM Barrie.

He said: "Barrie thought the play was lost so it's wonderful that it has survived. It's an important work in a number of ways, for example it shows how he loved to collect themes and ideas from everything he read and turn them into something of his own."

JM Barrie lived in Dumfries from the age of 13 to 17 years, and played in the garden at Moat Brae which he described as an "enchanted land".

The Peter Pan Moat Brae Trust was set up in 2009 to save Moat Brae House and garden from demolition and to celebrate its international literary connection as 'The Birthplace of Peter Pan'.