T he Sevenoaks Players have spent the last few years performing at venues other than their spiritual home, The Stag. But now, with the theatre in the safe hands of the town council and the past problems nothing but a distant memory, the Players are bringing their version of Wilkie Collins' mystery The Woman In White to their much-loved Stag stage.

Originally written as a book in 1859, the tale has been retold in several film and television versions, countless plays and, famously, in a stage musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber.

Well aware the story is a mystery and has been described as one of the first in the detective fiction genre, Go! is wary of giving too much of it away. Director Sandra Barfield kindly agreed to explain as much of the plot as she felt comfortable with.

"The plot is more or less the same as the book," she says. "It's about a young man who meets a very strange lady all dressed in white on the road to London. He's very struck by this, it's very unusual. She's not a prostitute, she's not something he would have expected to see. We're talking about the 1850s, after all.

"And he then hails her a carriage and she goes off. But then he finds that some people are obviously chasing her and they say that she has escaped from a mental asylum.

"And that's his first encounter with the woman in white. The story progresses from there and he gets a job at Limmeridge Hall as drawing master to two young sisters in their 20s. He then realises that one of the younger sisters looks exactly like this woman he met on the road.

"And that's it. Any further, I shall not go! People will have to come along to see what happens next."

Does the story still hold up today?

"It's a great page-turner. Regardless of the time, it still holds up. You still want to know what happens, you still want to know about the characters. And after the meeting on the road, you want to carry on and find out what happens. You can't just leave it there."

Is it quite a complicated play for the cast?

"The woman in white herself is a very simple girl, what I suppose we would call Downes Syndrome today. She's very sweet and lovely, and very clever in lots of ways but not clever in other things. It's very difficult for the actor.

"Actually all of the actors had a hard time getting to grips with the period of the play and with the characters, because they're very distinctive. You can't tweak them to be something they aren't.

"Rather like Dickens, Collins draws characters beautifully. But yes, they are having a hard time with the language and sitting down correctly – all those things. But it's great fun."

Are you excited to be back at The Stag?

"We really are. It's the first play the Players will have done at The Stag for a good few years now and we're all really looking forward to it.

"It presents its own challenges, of course, because we've recently been used to being on a much smaller stage.

"It's a bit frightening. We're used to being much more intimate with the audience but now we're coming back to a big theatre."

Finally, belated congratulations on your victory at the Leatherhead Festival this year. You directed Effie's Burning, which won awards presented by Michael Caine.

"Yes I did and I'm very proud. For the play to get best actress as well as best play was just great. And Michael Caine is exactly how he seems, he's not any different. He's one of the few stars with whom you get what you see, which was really nice."

November 11 to November 14 at 8pm (Saturday matinee at 2.30pm), The Stag, Sevenoaks. Tickets: Wednesday evening and Saturday matinee £10, Thursday, Friday and Saturday evenings £12. Phone the box office on 01732 450175