IT just goes to show how in demand a playwright Bryony Lavery is when not one but two of her plays is being put on at the same theatre in the same season.

We’re essentially here to chat about her very cool new adaptation of Graham Greene’s Brighton Rock, produced by the acclaimed Pilot Theatre, which arrives at the Mercury next week.

But what she doesn’t know is that her adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island, originally commissioned by the National Theatre back in 2014, is also being staged in the town in May by the Mercury’s Youth Theatre.

“Nobody tells me anything,” she replies when I inform her. “I really didn’t know but I’m now very excited to hear it’s being done by their youth group, how brilliant, I must come and see it.”

Which considering how busy she is, will be a real coup for the Colchester theatre.

“I do like to go and see most things,” she tells me, “especially the rehearsals. It’s such a thrill. I’ve really enjoyed sitting in on Brighton Rock but I’ve not been there as much as I would have liked. I’ve got three shows on at the moment; Balls in New York, Frozen at the Haymarket, and Brighton Rock, and all of them have taken up quite a lot of time.”

Balls tells the story of the famous ‘Battle of the Sexes’ tennis match between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs, while Frozen, perhaps Bryony’s most famous play, deals with the lives of three people connected through the murder of a child. It stars Suranne Jones, Nina Sosanya and Jason Watkins and has already picked up rave reviews.

“I saw the first run through and was spellbound,” she reveals. “It was just a joy to watch them.”

But we’re here to talk about Brighton Rock, which is also picking up huge plaudits.

Directed by Pilot Theatre’s new Artistic Director Esther Richardson it features a soundtrack composed by the acclaimed singer, musician and composer Hannah Peel and a gritty set designed by Sara Perks, the designer behind Turn of the Screw’s captivating slanted view.

In Graham Greene’s iconic novel of sin and redemption two 17-year olds, Pinkie and Rose, get embroiled in a vicious gang war in Brighton where one brutal murder leads to the next. The police are impassive but the courageous and life embracing Ida Arnold wants the truth. Nothing scares her. Whatever the cost, she’ll see justice is done.

Written in 1938, Graham Greene’s classic novel of good and evil was first adapted for the stage at the Garrick Theatre with Richard Attenborough playing Pinkie, a role he resumed in the iconic 1947 film version.

This new version of Brighton Rock’s cast features Jacob James Beswick who starred in People, Places and Things at the National and Peter Pan at Regents Park Open Air Theatre, as Pinkie; and Gloria Onitiri, who has been in The Lion King in the West End, most recently as Cruela De Vil in 101 Dalmations for Birmingham Rep but was also in the Mercury’s Clybourne Park in 2016, as Rose.

Well known for her adaptations as well as her original plays, Bryony has written her own versions of such works as Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited for York Theatre Royal/English Touring Theatre and Charles Dickens’ Our Mutual Friend for Hull Truck Theatre.

So what attracted her to Brighton Rock?

“It is such a treasure chest of narrative delights,” she answers. “It has got everything. It’s a love story, a revenge tragedy, a small-town murder mystery, an array of small-time gangsters and a middle-aged woman who knows no fear and who will stop at nothing to do right.

“In the poisoned relationship between Pinkie and Rose, there is one of the best accounts ever of what it is like to be 16 and 17 years’ old in a terrible, violent, adolescence.

“Esther has always wanted to work with me and so asked if I might be interested in doing Brighton Rock. I always say if my heart lifts when I’m reading the book, then I’ll do it, and it definitely did with Brighton Rock.”

Having read the book in her early 20s and ‘somehow only seen the second film’, not the most famous one with Richard Attenborough’s iconic performance, a number of things struck about the piece.

“For a start how young Pinkie and Rose are,” she continues. “I suppose because I was young when I read it first hand, that fact didn’t really strike me. When you’re young you think everyone is the same age as you but now with distance between then and now, I could really see the relationship between age and the way they behaved.

“I must say Esther has done a brilliant job with it. We’ve got dark angels that move the scene from one to another and music from the coolest composer. It’s going to be great.”

While insisting on keeping to the spirit of the book as much as possible, as with her adaptation of Treasure Island, Bryony couldn’t resist playing around with a few gender stereotypes.

“With Treasure Island,” she says, “there’s only really two female character in the book and they both don’t do much at all so I decided to make Jim a girl, Dr Livesey a woman, and also change some of the pirates into women, which was actually true in real life. there were loads of female pirates.

“I’ve done a similar thing with Brighton Rock, cross gendering, and making some of the gang played by women as well as men.”

Brighton Rock runs at the Mercury Theatre, Colchester, from Tuesday, March 13, to Saturday, March 17, at 7.30pm each night with matinees on Thursday and the Saturday, which starts at 2.30pm.

Tickets range in price from £27 to £12, available from the Mercury box office on 01206 573948 or on-line at www.mercurytheatre.co.uk