INCREASINGLY creating their own work, young writers, actors and directors are not afraid to tackle some hefty stories based on real life.

Bringing alive radical history and recalling the lives of ordinary people achieving extraordinary things is the mission of small companies such as Townsend Productions with their play Dare Devil Rides to Jarama and, pre-lockdown, acapella group The Young ’Uns were touring The Ballad of Johnny Longstaff.

Both pieces focus on a febrile time and complex events, when the Spanish civil war broke out in the summer of 1936.

Now Wonder Fools, set up in 2014 by Jack Nurse and Robbie Gordon, have devoted themselves to cherishing the lives of four miners from the East Lothian town of Prestonpans in the show 549: Scots of the Spanish Civil War.

Its focus is George Watters, Jimmy Kempton, Jock Gilmour and Bill Dickson, who answered the anti-fascist call and joined the International Brigades. The latter two died on the battlefields of Spain.

The production toured last year and now there’s a filmed version online. Nurse, co-author with Gordon, also directed and is rueful that it “won’t recreate the magic of being in a bustling town hall.”

Fair enough, it’s not ideal and was initially captured only for their archive and the audio is a little ropey. But this ensemble — Gordon, along with Rebekah Lumsden, Michael MacKenzie, Nicholas Ralph, Cristian Ortega and Josh Whitelaw — light up the stage with energy.

As four friends sit in the pub, their banter shot through with impotent fury at so-called austerity, a ghostly figure lures them to their own poverty-hit town, some 80 years before. There, communist George Watters on his soapbox rallies the crowd: “Fascism is a disease that we must kill. We must stop it spreading. But we must act now. We are not immune,” he declares.

“I ask you to take a look at the lives of ordinary working people in this country. There’s nothing that we’ve achieved in life that hasn’t been through conflicts or strikes.”

This isn’t a tale of boyish bravura; it doesn’t shy away from the terror of battle, despair of imprisonment, nor the grief over lost pals. The moment when Watters’s wife Ellen, fearing herself a widow each day, sees her husband in a cinema news bulletin, is heartbreaking. It’s a production heavy with the ghosts of those who would not return.

Mike Arnott, Scottish secretary of the International Brigade Memorial Trust, sums up the power of the piece: “The play is a wonderful tribute to four young miners from Prestonpans who left behind family, friends and all they knew, to go to Spain.

“The cast bring them back to us and make them live among us. Their emotions, humour and vitality carry us with them on an unforgettable journey.”

Available on YouTube: youtube.com/watch?v=bdWe9RbcTeQ&feature=youtu.be, For more information on Wonder Fools, including their new project to support young people creating online work, visit wonderfools.org. There’s also a lovingly curated archive at 549.scot