Weekend fling to Blackpool is key plot line in Poulton Drama's Lancashire favourite Hindle Wakes

The play, Hindle Wakes, may have been written in 1912, but it still resonates today.

It’s the story of two Lancashire mill owners, whose respective children are due to be married to each other, so creating a future dynasty in the town of Hindle.

However, a spirited, determined mill girl, Fanny Hawthorn, throws an enormous spanner in the works when it's revealed, through a tragedy, that she had an illicit weekend away during wakes holidays with one of the mill owners, Nathaniel Jeffcote's, son, Alan. He was due to marry fellow mill owner Sir Tim Farrar's daughter, Beatrice. But, when the scandal is uncovered, the repercussions of their fling expose the tensions of class and morality that permeated society at the time and threaten to rip them all apart.

Stanley Houghton's play was one of the first to have a working-class female protagonist and, remember, this was before women even got the vote. The idea, too, that such a character could also have an opinion and determination that refused to follow the expectations of the day would have been outrageous. Not surprisingly, the play provoked uproar from certain establishment sectors when it was first performed. It has proved firmly popular ever since, with films and countless nationwide theatre productions, including a recent revival on the New York stage.

Poulton Drama's Ian Ames said: "What happened would, today, cause little comment. But, when it was written, such an event proved sensational."

Claire Hull-Naylor plays the feisty mill girl "heroine", Fanny, with Mason Forrest's mill boss son, Alan, having to rescue his betrothal - and family's reputation - to Beatrice (Beccy Hands). Does he succeed?

Anthony Henry is the powerful mill boss Timothy Jeffcote, trying to save his family's reputation. Other roles, battling to keep social and moral order in the face of a scandal, are played by Susan Haydock, Joanna Crook, Stuart Holden and Phil Gorner. Takes place at Thornton Little Theatre November 23-26, 7.30pm