The Eugene O’Neill Theater Center has announced that a musical adaptation of Picnic at Hanging Rock – first a novel by Joan Lindsay, then a film by Peter Weir – will be developed at the this year’s National Music Theater conference.

With book, music and lyrics by Daniel Zaitchik, the show is described as a “delicately haunting mystery” that follows a group of schoolgirls from a prestigious boarding school who are released from their studies for a picnic on Valentine’s Day in 1900. When three of the girls vanish into the wilderness, a dark reverie of sexuality, repression, nature, and the unknown is set in motion. A previous workshop of the musical took place at the Lincoln Center Theatre in 2007, after an initial reading at the Ars Nova Theatre.

Picnic at Hanging Rock will be performed from 27 June – 3 July. The show has an official website, where you can hear some songs from the score, which sounds absolutely intriguing!