Review: A Passionate Woman ****

Betty is sat on the roof of her modest semi-detached.

After a lifetime of fading into the background, it's her one act of defiance. Her son, Mark, is there, too. It's his wedding day and with his bride having already arrived at the church, he's desperately trying to tempt her down to solid ground.

With her beloved and only son about to fly the nest, Betty is fearful of what the future might hold. She's terrified she might have wasted her life and worried it's too late to do anything about it. However, as Mark slips down to the guttering, she also can't resist pointing out he should have put some stick-on soles on his new leather shoes.

It's a moment which sums all that's good about A Passionate Woman. Part Alan Bennett, part Victoria Wood, it's a script which sings with perfect one-liners, heartbreaking confessions and painful realisations.

Written by Kay Mellor in 1992, after her own mother's admission of an affair many years before, the play was recently given the small screen treatment in a BBC adaptation starring Billie Piper and Sue Johnston as the younger and older Betty.

Mellor has seen various actresses take on the role over the years, but she's now reclaimed it for herself in this latest production at Hull Truck. By the final curtain, you suspect, it's a character she's going to find hard to give up at the end of the run.

Ably supported by Andrew Dunn as her hapless husband, Anthony Lewis as Mark and Stuart Manning as the ghost of Craze, the man who stole Betty's heart all those years ago, director Gareth Tudor Price has polished a much loved piece of theatre into a gem.

To Oct 2.