and young mum caught between her youthful dreams of showbiz glamour and the realisation of her more likely future: soul-crushing domesticity and drudgery with upwardly mobile boyfriend Dave. With her for support is the awkward, frumpy Maureen, long in the shadow of her slimmer, better-looking friend. But Bunters nightclub holds few prospects for Julie - just a grotty dressing room, a surprise encounter with Mel, the flash, sportscar-driving boyfriend who abandoned her as a pregnant schoolgirl eight years ago, and the unwelcome attentions of the oily compere, who precedes his seduction by telling her, "you have got a mediocre voice, a terrible Lancashire accent, no experience and no act," before enticing her with the promise of a spot on the Des O'Connor Show (moments later, he is groping a bemused Maureen and offering her twenty minutes in the back of his white Cortina)." Stage version The play was first performed at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield in September 1978. It was directed by David Leland. The cast was Hazel Clyne (Julie), Victoria Wood (Maureen), Roger Sloman (George Findlay), Bill Stewart (Arthur Hall), Eric Richard (Mel), Peter Ellis (Compere). Wood also went to the side of the stage to play piano to accompany the songs in the show. She said: "I think that worked better than having a band. I have never seen it done since in the way that we did it. I suppose because fat actresses who can double as musical director are thin on the ground (or fat on the ground)." She later claimed that she had not intended to be in the show at all, "though everyone assumed I had written it with the express purpose of drinking Babycham and having my bosoms fondled nightly." The show had a London Transfer to the ICA, beginning on 31 January 1979, with Bill Stewart and Peter Ellis being replaced by David Ellson and Jim Broadbent. The show had a London fringe revival in 2008 at 'Upstairs at the Gatehouse'. The cast was Vikki Stone (Maureen), Stephanie Briggs (Julie), Harry Dickman (George Findlay), John Walters (Arthur Hall) and Charlie Carter (Mel/The Compere). In September 2009 a revival began at the Menier Chocolate Factory in London, also directed by Victoria Wood. The play was revived in 2021, at the Sheffield Crucible (this time on the main stage), in a production directed by Paul Foster and with Lucie Shorthouse as Julie &