Theatre!

Johnny Longstaff, born in 1919 in Stockton on Tees, was politicised by poverty. The Imperial War Museum has a six-hour recording made in 1981 of him talking about his life: begging for bread as a child from workers leaving the factories, being injured when working as a foundry worker aged 14 so losing his job, walking to London in the 1934 hunger march, joining an industrial dispute in Tooting, being involved in the Battle of Cable Street and finding out there about the war in Spain which, aged 18, he joined.

The Young'uns, a folk trio from Teesside, tell this story in song in front of imaginative projected backdrops. This is not one of them - this was my (phone) camera doing something very strange as the band came back on after the interval and I was pretending not to be stealing a picture. 

A really good evening back in the Playhouse after 18 months.

Most of you have missed it - sorry - but anyone near to Oxford 29 -30 September or near York 29-30 October is in with a chance.