MARIA Gray stands out amid the pallor of winter in York. She is suntanned, glowing, far too healthy for February, as she sits discussing her return to York Theatre Royal for a revival of last year's Studio hit, The Machine Stops.

"I've been away in India, in Varkala, Kerala, for five weeks and I've come back a fully qualified yoga teacher now, so I'll be extra-bendy for the show," says Maria, who plays the ever-clambering Machine 2 in Juliet Forster's touring co-production for Pilot Theatre and York Theatre Royal.

"I've been there since the New Year and after I flew back I came straight into rehearsals for The Machine Stops, so I've just had to bash through jetlag!"

Maria is the one cast member from last year's show to reprise her role in Neil Duffield's adaptation of E M Forster's 1909 sci-fi short story of a future world where humans have retreated underground and are reliant on the Machine for their every need, as Forster presents a chilling prediction of our relationship with technology.

Only Kuno questions the planet's dependency on the Machine but in his struggle to break free from its control, can he reach the Earth's surface before the Machine stops?

Maria is teaming up with company newcomer Adam Slynn as the Machine, while Rohan Nedd plays Kuno and Ricky Butt, his mother Vashti. "We've approached it as if it's a new piece, where we can 'reinvent the ride' and I can give it my own spin," says 22-year-old Londoner Rohan. "I see it as a fresh piece of writing that I'm attacking for the first time.

"The first thing I thought, when I read the script, is that as much as it has dystopian futuristic vibe, we're now not far off the world that E M Forster predicted, with people always on their mobiles phones, face down, rather than looking up. A world where we interact with technology, rather than the outside world. So I found it easy to connect with Kuno and how he wants to no longer be stuck in the 'prison' of an underground cell but to go to the surface and experience the outdoors again."

Maria finds resonance in E M Forster's vision of a world of separated, compartmentalised, machine-driven lives as she looks at the heads-down, cyber-focused world we live in. "I get so passionate about all the human contact that's being lost, and how less and less we touch each other, and just connect on machines," she says.

Rohan rejoins: "So to experience something as organic, living and breathing as this piece of theatre, as everyone sits there together, is really important, even if the story is uncomfortable."

The Machine Stops runs in The Studio, York Theatre Royal, until February 18 and then on tour. York tickets are on sale at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk and on 01904 623568.