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.   

Set in the fictional Lancashire cotton mill town of Hindle, the play was hugely controversial when first performed in 1910. It scandalised audiences in its treatment of pre-marital sex and provoked correspondence in the Pall Mall Gazette, in which the author participated, with many correspondents questioning whether the play's treatment of non-marital sex would set a bad example. The play was the first to feature a working-class woman as its hero

When the working-class Hawthorns find their daughter, mill-girl Fanny, has had a fling in Llandudno with the boss's son, instead of holidaying in Blackpool, both sets of parents expect him to do the decent thing and marry her. But she has other ideas.

Reviewing the play in its centenary year, Guardian critic Michel Billington called it, 'An assault on moral rigidity, whether it comes from the workers or their bosses. And who is to say that we still don't live in a world that has one law for sexually adventurous men and another for women?'

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’