In contrast to their debut production, Attlee: a modest Little Man, humorously featuring the tensions around the 1945 Labour government's creation of the welfare state, Red Wall Theatre's follow-up show, Hindle Wakes, is set in 1910, in the fictional Lancashire cotton-mill town of Hindle. When the working-class Hawthorns discover that, instead of holidaying in Blackpool, their daughter Fanny has spent a weekend in LLandudno with mill-owner's son, Alan Jeffcote, both sets of parents want to ensure Alan does the right thing and marries Fanny, only to find she has other ideas.

Author Stanley Houghton belonged to the pre-first world war Manchester school of playwrights that included Harold Brighouse, who wrote Hobson's Choice, a play that similarly celebrated - to  similar humorous effect - a feistily independent female protagonist. Sadly Houghton died aged 32, just a year after his play moved to the West End.   

Casting is taking place in the second week of December, with rehearsals starting in February and performances  in Harrogate and Ripon from 11th to13th April. Director Gary Gordon would particularly welcome interest from younger women in the part of Fanny and the smaller part of Alan's fiancee Beatrice, interestingly played in the 1912 production by a young Dame Sybil Thorndyke.

Co-founder Jan Williams says,' The play is ahead of its time with themes of feminism and class-division, explored with humanity and humour. It fulfils Red Wall's mission to stage new or little-known drama, of popular appeal with social edge.' Tickets here: www.buytickets.at/redwalltheatre

‘dark satanic mills’