“Reel” life during the war years

In theatre terms, the conversation between director and film programme manager was such a dramatic cliche – along the lines of ‘let’s do the show right here!’ – that it would have been dismissed as improbable by any self-respecting writer.When Dukes artistic director Ian Hastings casually asked film programme manager Lesley Anne Rose if she thought enough material could be amassed about cinema-going in Lancaster during the Second World War to make a play out of it, her response: “Yes, I’ve been writing it for eight years”, took him by surprise.