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At some point in the middle of the second half, you notice how insinuatingly Bob Eaton’s show has taken a hold of you. Until then, you have no reason to see it as more than one of those jolly slices of social history, the type that ticks off the shared experiences of pop and politics, leavened by a soundtrack of rock’n’roll standards and given a local spin with references to disappearing landmarks such as the Shelton Bar steel works.

Eaton was at the vanguard of actor-musician shows when he first staged Good Golly Miss Molly! for the New Vic in 1989, and its story was topical. It is about the residents of Hawes Street in Tunstall, who resisted the council’s plan to demolish their houses as part of a slum clearance programme, and made the successful case for home improvements instead.

The director clocked that music was the glue that bound the community together, and that the story could be told through the lens of a band reuniting for a nostalgic knees-up in a social club. The Molly of his title (a beautifully understated Shirley Darroch in Eaton’s revival) would go from belligerent schoolgirl to lead singer, NUM staffer and residents’ association chair, finding self-fulfilment on the way.

This is the part of the story that is not immediately obvious because of the various family rows, pregnancies and trips back and forth to London. But when it hits home, fortified by the tremendous company doo-wopping, harmonising and swapping instruments, it feels like the angst and yearning of the songs are the perfect expression of the working-class struggle Good Golly Miss Molly! describes.

It would have greater impact if the conflict were more fully explored. Perhaps in 1989 the details were more widely understood, but the play gives only a sketchy idea of what the residents have to lose and, in the form of sympathetic councillor Eddie (David Ahmad), only a vague impression of the forces they are up against. There is, however, a joyful sense of the music pulling us into the action – literally for those in the front row – giving an exuberant lift to the company’s 40th anniversary season.