With a 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 very different. Stuck at the station, she soon finds her main jobs are typing and making brews.
Iris joins forces with fellow ‘girl in blue' 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. 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." 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 Marian Hood, Barn Theatre and Swallows and Amazons, York Theatre Royal).
‘A Force to be Reckoned With' is directed by Mikron newcomer Gitika 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). Amanda Whittington is one of the most widely performed playwrights in the country and was delighted to make her Mikron debut with Atalanta Forever in 2021.
She's done the maths and discovered she's written 40 plays over the years, including ‘Be My Baby', ‘The Thrill of Love', ‘Kiss Me Quickstep' and most recently, the third in her Ladies trilogy, ‘Ladies Unleashed'. Amanda's published by Nick Hern Books and her work for Radio 4 includes seven series of the award-winning D for Dexter and The Archers.
‘A Force to be Reckoned With' will be touring nationally in the summer alongside Poppy Hollman's new play ‘Twitchers' which takes us on a flight through RSPB history, feathered with birdsong and laughter.
