How can you think you’ve found so much and suddenly wake-up and find you’ve found nothing at all

Its 1962. Victor Brown is 20 years old and he’s infatuated with Ingrid Rothwell, a typist from the factory where he works. Both are from Cressley, a working-class town in West Riding, Yorkshire.  Victor soon finds his feelings for Ingrid have nothing to do with love. But Ingrid loves Victor and agrees to carrying on with their unofficial courtship in bus shelters, parks and the cinema.

Ignorance leads to Ingrid getting pregnant, and they are forced into a marriage that neither is ready for and Vic doesn’t want.  When Vic moves in with his in-laws everything changes, and the bargaining begins.

A Kind of Loving was published in 1960 and made Stan Barstow one of the key voices of the 1960’s cultural renaissance in British life.

Bang Theatre’s A Kind of Loving launches North meets South. An ongoing exploration of Northern writers’ novels, plays and films, past, present and future.

Press for previous productions

A topical, moving production looking at the story of one of the millions of men killed in WW1. Moving, polished and incredibly professional. ★★★★ Everything Theatre on Killed, July 17^th 1916

Effortlessly transported to the decadent Thirties, the all- round sparkling cast brings out the text’s hilarity and makes the themes of avarice, marital and social ambition contemporary. ★★★★ The Stage on The Magnetic Lady

Showed a piquant affinity with the big life questions being considered here – those human themes that bear so heavily on us: love, loss, the body, war, grief, motherhood, womanhood, the often-destructive nature of men. ★★★★ Anita-Marguerite Butler on Shakespeare’s Women  

Image: Two Lovers Kissing © Estate of Bob Collins/Museum Of London