Two's company, three's a howl

In 1980, I was doing Hamlet with Jonathan Pryce at the Royal Court, and I happened to see Andrea Dunbar's first play The Arbor, written when she was only 15.

I think I saw it twice because it was a very rare piece - so little that authentic is written about working-class life. Also it reminded me of D.H. Lawrence. Rita, Sue And Bob Too developed out of The Arbor with several recurring characters and, like The Arbor, was put on by Max Stafford-Clark at the Royal.

People said Andrea's work was untutored, but she wasn't unsophisticated. She had a real sense of drama - what you put in and what you leave out. And people said it was a risk for Max to put such a young, unproven writer's work on stage. I suppose it was - except when you read something, the good stuff just jumps off the page at you. So actually it is never much of a risk. The risk is putting on bad plays.

Andrea Dunbar died of a brain haemorrhage at the age of 29. It is hard to say on the basis of a couple of plays how good she would have become. Had she lived she would have gone on writing and got better, but probably the plays would never quite have had the freshness, originality and guile of those first ones.

If you have only seen the film of Rita, Sue And Bob Too, Max Stafford-Clark's new production is a great opportunity to discover the play's freshness - and its darker side. The night is a double bill. Max and company went back to the estates in Bradford and Leeds where Andrea Dunbar grew up - and Robin Soans turned the record of what they found into A State Affair. I think that is a great idea.