IT seems entirely appropriate that producer Tracey Child’s first encounter with the Mercury was with a spooky chiller.

Especially as we’re sitting in Food @ the Mercury talking about another, the first Made in Colchester production of 2018, Turn of the Screw.

A co-production between the Mercury, Dermot McLaughlin Productions and Wolverhampton Grand Theatre, this new adaptation of Henry James’ much-loved classic ghost story, by writer Tim Luscombe, is set to tour the country following its premiere run in Colchester, which opens tonight, February 23.

And it’s another feather in the cap for producer Tracey, who since joining the staff at the Colchester theatre has helped to make the Mercury a nationwide name as one of the country’s top notch creators of stunning theatre.

She says: “I’ve always thought theatres work at their best when they combine the subsidised with the commercial.

“My first show at the Mercury was a commercial tour of Alan Ayckbourn’s Haunting Julia as an independent producer. We set up a co-production with the Mercury at exactly the same time as Ruth Eastwood was interim chief executive looking for a new executive team.

“By the time we had opened the show Daniel (Buckroyd) had been appointed Artistic Director and I could see what he wanted to do with the place.”

Living in Theydon Bois, so an ‘Essex girl, but not quite on the doorstep’, when Tracey saw a place on the board going she decided to apply for it.

Gazette: Spooky - Members of the cast of the Mercury Theatre’s play Haunting Julia Duncan Preston, Richard O’Callaghan and Joe McFadden.

Duncan Preston, Richard O’Callaghan and Joe McFadden, of Haunting Julia

“I had such a great experience with Haunting Julia,” she recalls. “When Andrew Hall and I formed our production company we were working to a simple formula which essentially was one find one of this country’s best writers, put together a superb cast and then come to a great theatre with quality and staff and technicians to stage it, and that was the Mercury.

“It was a few months of being on the board when they started thinking about appointing a producer and I thought ‘hang on a minute, I would quite like that job’.

“Coincidently Andrew was going into Coronation Street and we had already made the decision to pull back a bit on producing our own work, so the timing was perfect.

“Funnily enough on my very first day at the theatre it was press night for Macbeth, which is definitely one of the plays in my top five with Lady Macbeth being a part I’ve always wanted to play.

“I’ve always been fascinated with how difficult the part is and I remember sitting there thinking actually I had made the right choice because I was enjoying being a producer so much.”

Born in London, in acting terms, Tracey is probably best remembered, for a certain generation, as Lynne Howard in the smash hit Eighties television programme Howard’s Way.

More recently she played Patty Cornwell in Hollyoaks and then Chief Superintendent Elaine Jenkinson in Broadchurch while on stage she starred opposite Matthew Kelly in Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? at the Trafalgar Studios in London in March 2009.

Gazette: Tracey Childs in Howard's Way

Tracey Childs in Howard's Way

But while Colchester theatre-goers haven’t had the pleasure - yet? - of seeing Tracey on the stage, we’ve definitely had the benefit of her years of experience behind the scenes.

Among her many successes have included persuading John Cleese and Nicky Henson to stage the premiere of his adaptation of Georges Feydeau’s farce Bang Bang here and the Mercury’s production of Spamalot on a far flung tour to South Korea.

Now another of her many connections, fellow Stage One producer alumni Dermot McLaughlin, has led to this production of Turn of the Screw.

Set in 1840, the play follows a young governess who agrees to look after two orphans, a boy and a girl, in Bly, a seemingly idyllic country house. But, shortly after her arrival, she realises that they are not alone. There are others – the ghosts of Bly’s troubled past.

The Governess will risk everything to keep the children safe, even if it means giving herself up to The Others. Years later, confronted by the past she is compelled to account for what actually happened to her and those under her protection.

Tracey says: “Dermot and Tim have put a fresh spin on the story setting it 30 years later and looking back on the events. When I read it, I absolutely loved it, and then sent it to Daniel not knowing he was already a huge fan of the book and the opera.

“Dermot asked me last autumn whether we would be interested but we already had our season booked out for this year until that is one of the shows we were going to do fell through and a slot became available. It was meant to be.

Gazette: Korean tour - The Mercury’s production of Spamalot

The Mercury’s production of Spamalot

“For Dermot this is a project he has been working on for more than five years, so it’s the final realisation of his dream, and we are more than happy to be making that happen for him.”

Turn of the Screw runs at the Mercury Theatre, Balkerne Gate, Colchester, from tonight until March 10, before embarking on a national tour that takes in Leeds, Portsmouth, Guildford and Chesterfield, before ending in May at the New Theatre in Cardiff.

For tickets, priced from £27 to £12 plus consession rates, call the Mercury Theatre box office on 01206 573948 or go online here.