THIS is the second world premiere of a Dennis Westgate musical by York Stars since the community company shed “Rising” from its name and left the Railway Institute after 13 years for a bigger stage.

Newcastle writer and composer Westgate has created a show based loosely on the life of Grace Darling, pretty much the Florence Nightingale of the nautical world. In her early 20s, this lighthouse keeper’s daughter acquired national fame for her part in the rescue of men, women and crewmen on the stricken Forfarshire off the Longstone coast in Northumberland.

As Westgate readily admits, not much else is known (save that she died at only 26). And so he has constructed a musical with a narrative arc from childhood, as ten-year-old Grace (a delightful Natalia Leaper) plays on the Bamburgh rocks in 1826, through the famous lifeboat rescue, to the tear-jerking denouement of her death.

Her love interest, the globe-trotting Joe Swann (Michael Tattersall), and her expansive family, together with villagers, townsfolk and fishermen and women, flesh out the story.

Company founder Charlotte Gray is not only the show’s co-director (with Donna Riley and Hayley Hetherington) but also plays the lead role of Grace, singing particularly expressively when Grace struggles to cope with the sudden attention (I Care Nothing For Fame).

Rob Davies cuts a stoical figure as the family’s rock, lighthouse keeper William Darling, and his rendition of Keeper Of The Light is an early highlight.

Michael Tattersall will be the one to watch from this company; his haunting In Your Shadow is a truly moving finale.

Grace Darling The Musical, The York Stars, Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, until Saturday. Box office: 01904 623568.