Hull writer goes back to her roots with three new plays

“You’ll struggle to find stuff on me on the internet – I’m Hull’s best kept secret,” says an ebullient Gill Adams.

There is a real paucity of information on the East Ridings writer on the worldwide web. She’s written for Emmerdale, Doctors, Band of Gold. She’s won awards, been praised as the writer with the best play at the 1997 Edinburgh Fringe. I happen to know her work, but if you were coming to the writer cold and had only the internet to rely on for research, you probably wouldn’t take Adams for the successful writer she is.

“It’s because I’m a woman, if I was a man and had done what I’ve done, then everyone would know about it,” says Adams. A statement like this – true or not – shouldn’t be mistaken as an indication that Adams is particularly a feminist, it’s just that, as she says: “Everything I write is 99 percent issue based. I can’t bear injustice, it’s something I’m fascinated by.”

If there is any injustice in Adams’ story, in the shape of a lack of wider recognition, that is about to be rectified.

Her script of Keeler is touring the country in a major production, she is also about to see three of her new plays performed in her home city’s most exciting new theatre venue. “It’s like I’ve been in the desert, but now I’m in Vegas,” she says.

Adams began her career in the early Nineties, writing for Hull Truck Theatre. In 1994 she took a play, Off Out, to Edinburgh, bagging the writer her first Fringe First Award. The play, which tells the story of prostitutes in Hull, was based on real-life accounts Adams heard first hand on the streets of the city.

It was a watershed moment for the writer, another coming in 1997 when her play Jump to Cow Heaven, about the disappearance of Kray henchman Frankie “The Mad Axe Man” Mitchell and starring a then unknown Martin Freeman, received another Fringe First.

The play was read by Paul Nicholas, the actor and producer, who approached Adams with the idea of writing a script based on the book by Christine Keeler.

“He liked the way that I had captured the Sixites in Jump to Cow Heaven, it was about the tone of the piece I had written, which he thought would work for Keeler’s story,” she says.

While that production, with its large cast and big sets is filling auditoria like the Bradford Alhambra next week and York Grand Opera House later in the tour, this weekend sees the writer go back to basics with three new plays being presented at Fruit in Hull.

“It’s back street stuff, like the pubs and little places we used to work when I started out. It is really exciting to be back doing that kind of work.”

Adams’ work in Yorkshire now

Keeler is Adams’ play based on the story of the Profumo Affair. Bradford Alhambra Sept 27-Oct 1 (01274 432000). York Grand Opera House, Oct 17-22, (0844 847 2322).

Book in hand readings of three new plays, Starman (Sept 23), Hooked (24) and Wild Man on My Back (25), Fruitspace, Hull. Tickets 01482 280018.