Abigail is a teenager who doesn't quite fit in. She's new in The Rocks, old in her dress sense, and stuck in the middle of her parents' messy separation. She can't wait to get away from all of it. When a street game played by the neighbourhood kids conjures up a mysterious girl, Abigail follows her down twisting alleyways to find herself stuck somewhere strangely familiar and yet entirely strange: The Rocks … in 1873.

Abigail must first work out where on earth she is, then how she's going to get home … and if she really wants to.

Kate Mulvany's adaptation of Ruth Park's classic Playing Beatie Bow, follows in the footsteps of her much-lauded version of Park's The Harp in the South, with all its colour, music, humour and verve.

In a rollicking tale filled with mystery, romance and magic, Playing Beatie Bow explores the gift each of us must discover inside ourselves. The past is closer than you think.