The film version starred Maureen O'Hara

How Green Was My Valley is being performed by pupils and staff at a school in Cwmbran nine years after it was first written.

Teachers Steve Benavente and Colin Ganderton came up with the idea of staging a musical based on the famous Welsh novel by Richard Llewellyn.

But in 1995, just weeks before the opening night, a West End production company heard of their plans and banned the school performance, claiming they did not have the legal right to present the show.

Finally, after nearly a decade of gathering dust on the shelves at Fairwater High School in Cwmbran, the teachers have got the right to put on their work.

Three shows at Newport's Dolman Theatre will be held from Thursday and some of the original players - including the boy who was to have played the lead role - will be part of the 80-strong cast.

Rehearsals have been going on for five months

"About nine years ago, we came up with the idea of writing a musical adaptation of How Green Was My Valley," said the school' s head of performing arts Steve Benavente.

"We applied to Richard Llewellyn's widow for permission to stage the play and she said yes."

The teachers then took 15 months to compose the script and were ready to stage the musical when the plug was pulled.

"It turned out that the correspondence we had from Richard Llewellyn's widow didn't mean we had the rights and we had to scrap the play," said Mr Benavente.

But last year, the teachers resurrected their script and were finally given permission to stage their musical by the novel's publishers.

A spokeswoman for the publishers Penguin confirmed that they granted the rights for the school to stage their musical version of the novel.

She said that Penguin held the performance rights to the novel and they has to grant permission before a production could be staged.

The teachers are thrilled that they have the go-ahead at last.

Memories

"We have got some of the original cast members including the boy who was supposed to play the role of Huw Morgan," said Mr Benavente.

"He was only 12 at the time and is now a university student but he has come back to be in the chorus because he is obviously a bit too old to play the part now."

Published in 1939, How Green Was My Valley offers a nostalgic look back at life in Wales in the early 20th Century.

It focuses on the memories of Huw Morgan, a young man growing up in a south Wales mining community, and how the harsh lessons of his youth taught him there was little as beautiful as his memories of Wales.

How Green Was My Valley was made into a 1941 film, starring Walter Pidgeon and Maureen O'Hara.