Mikron Theatre to premiere new Amanda Whittington play A Force to be Reckoned With

Mikron Theatre is to premiere a new Amanda Whittington play about the pioneering women of Britain’s Police force.

A Force To Be Reckoned With will open at Marsden Mechanics Hall on 13th May and then tour nationally by canal, river and road until 21st October including a performance at the Greater Manchester Police Museum & Archives.

The production’s cast of actor/musicians will feature Eddie Ahrens (Monopoly Lifesized, Selladoor/Gamepath Entertainment), Hannah Baker (The 39 Steps, OVO Theatre), Harvey Badger (Spring Awakening, Stratford Circus Arts Centre) and Rachel Hammond (The True Adventures of Marian and Robin Hood, Barn Theatre and Swallows and Amazons, York Theatre Royal).

More Heartbeat than Happy Valley, ‘A Force to be Reckoned With’ is an arresting story which captures a century of change.

With handbag, whistle and a key to the Police Box, WPC Iris Armstrong is ready for whatever the mean streets of a 1950s market town throws at her. Fresh from police training school, she prepares for her first day on the beat. The reality is quite different. Stuck at the station, she soon finds her main jobs are typing and making brews.

Iris joins forces with fellow WPC Ruby Roberts. They’re an unlikely partnership. A two-girl department, called to any case involving women and children, from troublesome teens to fraudulent fortune tellers. What starts as ‘women’s work’ soon becomes a specialist role. Iris finds she’s earning her place in a historic force to be reckoned with.

Along the way, she discovers the Edwardian volunteers who came before her, a lineage of Suffragettes-turned-moral enforcers and the secrets that the police box hides.

A Force To Be Reckoned With is directed by Gitka Buttoo (Road, Oldham Coliseum), designed by Celia Perkins, with musical composition by Greg Last (The Borrowers and The Rise and Fall of Little Voice, Theatre by the Lake and musically directed and composed by Dan McGlade (Macbeth and Twelfth Night, Leeds Playhouse).

Playwright Amanda Whittington said about her new play: “I’m delighted to be back at Mikron in their 51st year with A Force to be Reckoned With. The play takes a light-hearted look at the lives of Women Police Constables in the 1950s, celebrating their spirit, optimism and heroic efforts to break the glass ceiling without a truncheon.”

For more information, full tour dates and tickets, visit mikron.org.uk