In 1916, William Locke wrote a short story called Ladies in Lavender.

In 2004 actor Charles Dance created a screenplay and a film from the tale, with Judi Dench and Maggie Smith apparently accepting the lead roles script-unseen.

Now, in 2012, that screenplay has been adapted for the stage by Shaun McKenna and it would be ludicrous if Oxford theatregoers don’t book and see this Royal & Derngate (Northampton) world premiere production.

Ludicrous because, if the play’s plot is slight, what the acting ensemble makes of it is the very opposite. It’s one of those ‘what happens to a settled community when an outsider appears in their midst?’ dramas that has been a staple of story telling for an age.

We have two elderly sisters, Ursula and Janet, who have lived together on the Cornwall coast for 20 years following the First World War — when Janet lost her young man.

Immediate company is provided by their housekeeper Dorcas and, on occasion, their local Dr Mead.

A young man is discovered washed up on the shore and is taken in to the sisters’ home to recover. We find out he’s Polish and a talented violinist. Such a person has not intruded into the consciousness of the sisters for many years. Janet is played by Belinda Lang (of much TV fame) with an older-sister equanimity that develops with emotional understanding. Carol Macready is Dorcas, broad of beam and downstairs humour.

Robert Duncan is Mead, the insecure and tweedy doctor who comes together in a vital subplot with Abigail Thaw as the initially mysterious Olga. Robert Rees is Andrea, the young male central fixture.

Which leaves Hayley Mills as Ursula. Reviewers of a certain age must pedal back from filmic memories of decades past and record that she brings a porcelain delicacy and purity to her part that is truly moving.

It quickly becomes clear that she has never known love and is drawn to the injured Andrea, delighting in reading The Little Mermaid to him as he recovers; she has already shown what emotions beat beneath her breast at the beginning, when she describes Rimsky-Korsakov’s music as speaking to her of ‘Cossacks on horseback with great flashing scimitars’. Her growing love for the young outsider is perfectly drawn and fragilely beautiful.

It would be remiss of me not to mention both the wonderful, all-purpose set designed by Lis Ascroft and an unsubtle production error (involving violin-playing) at the very end of the play that needs to be taken out before it arrives — as may be — in the West End.

The show continues until Saturday. Tickets from the Oxford Playhouse box office, or call 01865 305305.