No matter your politics, the gutsy story of 'Red Ellen' Wilkinson has much to say about a remarkable life lived and a legacy that rings true today.
Fiery Ellen with her diminutive stature, red hair and political fire was a maverick as a politician and a woman as she clawed her way to recognition in the 1920s and 30s at time when the glass ceiling hadn't even been invented - in fact it was almost audacious to think that a working class woman such as she could become a government minister.
In this play by Caroline Bird, as Bettrys Jones brings all Ellen's fire power to the stage highlighting her passion, impetuosity - and frustration at the barriers put in her way by her sex. She's always having to work twice as hard and be twice as good as the men that surround her. Heard that before?
Her story takes us from the Jarrow March - 'through Ripon, Harrogate, Sheffield' - to wartime bomb shelters, to the Spanish Civil War - and encounters with the likes of Ernest Hemingway and Winston Churchill.
A sparing set changes often, echoing Ellen's frenzied, non-stop pace of life and the cast participates with set movements and costume changes on stage so there's much to take in, a lively pace as well as wit and wisdom and in the writing
You come to understand Red Ellen and her legacy - as education minister she brought in school milk and free school meals for children, recognising a link between nutrition and learning - and she raised the school leaving age to 15.
Ellen's is a story of struggle, might and triumph, it's a story worth telling now as much as ever.
