YOU wait ages for a Lisa Holdsworth play about Andrea Dunbar to come along, then two come at once. Her stage version of Adelle Stripe’s novel about the writer, Black Teeth and a Brilliant Smile, opens in Bradford later this month.

It follows Unsung, an ensemble piece about inspirational but under-imagined women. The screenwriter and playwright worked on it for over two years, persuaded by Alice Barber and Elvi Piper – “fresh-faced new voices in theatre in Leeds,” according to Holdsworth — to develop a play featuring real-life women selected by members of the cast.

Buttershaw actress Kat Rose-Martin chose Dunbar, whose gritty 1982 comedy Rita, Sue and Bob Too, based on the Yorkshire housing estate where she lived, brought her great acclaim.  A young writer of huge promise, she tragically died of a brain haemorrhage in 1990 at the age of 29.