Who was the second-last woman hanged in Britain? The seventh-last? No, me either. Ruth Ellis achieved the saddest variety of fame, in being the final one, and helping ensure no more suffered that fate.

As a nightclub ‘hostess’, Ellis lived and worked in the seedy 1950s world of rich, powerful men out for a good time. In Amanda Whittington’s new play she is seen as a romancing fantasist, yearning for glamour while living in fairly depressing surroundings. Faye Castelow plays her as a chirpy, capable and sometimes physically brave woman in a doomed, abusive relationship. She’s vulnerable and self-destructive despite being taking on a role of some power as manager of a ‘gentlemen’s club’.

The script is full of good lines, and there are very realistic exchanges among the women players, Hilary Tones, Maya Wasowicz and Katie West supporting Castelow. Mark Meadows completes the ensemble as the police officer investigating Ellis’ killing of her lover. One telling moment comes when Ellis reveals her – again romanticised – preference of execution over a life in prison. Can that be how she reasoned, accepting her guilt and refusing to appeal? Or did she by then see herself always at the mercy of circumstance?

A problem with real-life stories is that the story may be pretty banal and that’s certainly the case here. The manner of the crime, six shots with a revolver in a Hampstead street, may be high drama. The consequences certainly are. But the life before was all too familiar. Whittington manages to bring each of her characters something extra to keep us interested and there’s tension right through.

Janis Bright

The Thrill of Love plays at the SJT until 23 March.

Arts Council meanness can’t keep the irrepressible Esk Valley Theatre down. The small but perfectly formed professional company has reacted to a grant cut with a series of great fund raising events, to ensure their big summer run can go ahead as usual. Now in its ninth year, the summer production has been a triumph – with quality and entertainment every bit as good as you’ll find in bigger theatres.

Directors Sheila Carter and Mark Stratton have managed something of a coup for their first fundraiser, on Sunday 17 February. Acclaimed actor Josh Richards will be staging his one-man show, Playing Burton.

From humble roots as the 12th child of a drunken Welsh miner, Richard Burton rose to become the world’s first megastar. He was infamously married to Elizabeth Taylor, and the word ‘paparazzi’ was coined for the photographers that surrounded them. But the real Burton, little Richie Jenkins, was known only to a few.

Josh has an extensive CV which includes working for the Royal Shakespeare Company. His association with Richard Burton has continued from stage to screen, starring in the feature film adaptation of Playing Burton. He has also voiced The Richard Burton Diaries for BBC Radio 4.

Esk Valley Theatre’s next event will be an auction of promises on Saturday 2 March.

The Robinson Institute - Glaisdale

Tickets: £12

An encounter with old friends can be tricky. Will they still be the same, or will we have grown apart? Will our idealised memories be rudely dashed by the real thing? 

So it goes with the Oscar Wilde gem The Importance of Being Earnest. A little trepidation beforehand, but soon you’re recalling all the reasons you loved the rogue in the first place. The SJT’s production sparkles, no awkward gaps in the conversation with its audience, and by the end you’re cheering for more.

You probably know the tale of the non-existent Earnest, or was it Jack, found in a handbag at a railway station – but at least it was the Brighton line. His pal Algy, as it happens, also has a convenient pal in the shape of the ailing Bunbury. Will Jack and Algy manage to make a match with Gwendolen and Cecily despite their best efforts to mess up?

The setup in the first half is long but the great lines just keep coming. It’s a biting comment on class of course, and there’s also plenty of asides on the fears of the upper crust in Edwardian England. Revolution is in the air, and Lady Bracknell is determined to fight it off with nothing more than a swish of taffeta and a voice to rattle the windowpanes. In the second half the pace really shifts and there’s hardly time to take in the cascade of one-liners.

The players are on great form. There’s a tremendous scene between Gwendolen (Naomi Fairfax) and Cecily (Beth Park) as both rivals and commiserants, amid the manners of high tea. The supporting players are equally good: Paul Ryan as Dr Chasuble really knows how to deliver a line.

Unsung heroes of the piece are the set and Jan Bee Brown’s costumes: both spot on, and adding another layer of enjoyment. Gwendolen’s hats are artworks with a life of their own, and better still they remain firmly atop that coiffure despite the general turmoil. Well, as Lady Bracknell insists, some standards must be kept.

The importance of being Earnest at the SJT until 5 January. Check dates and times: 01723 370541

The SJT has grown used to staging world premieres of Alan Ayckbourn’s plays, but it’s still quite a coup to get John Godber to write and direct a play especially for this theatre. What Ayckbourn does for the suburban middle classes, Godber does for the workers – portraying them with wit and affection while putting their lives under the microscope.

Godber is joined by his wife, fellow playwright Jane Thornton, for this double bill of plays set among holidaymakers in Scarborough’s summer season. Jane Thornton’s play Lost gives us an elderly couple – Betty, determined to make the best of what they have, and curmudgeonly Len, determined to make the worst of everything. We learn that Len has some cause to be cynical, but while his dry wit gives some good lines, it’s clear that he is a bloody awful man to live with, and Betty has had enough. There’s a generational aspect to this; a clever woman like Betty but twenty years younger would surely have thrown him over. Though it has a lot of good laughs, and despite a slightly uplifting ending, the play is about Len’s tragic inability to rise above his fate, a theme that’s been with us since theatre began.

John Godber’s Found shows off his ability to produce sparkling dialogue – in the opening ten minutes barely a single sentence gets finished as the pauses, overlaps and gestures flow together beautifully. It is a masterclass in how to get meaning out of language.

On the last day of the summer season two temporary hotel workers meet up for . . . well, for what? That is the question. Chelsea, the brassy ‘older woman’, thinks she has been invited for some sex by Tom, the young student. The misunderstanding is beautifully mined for the underlying tensions between the working-class good-time girl and the aspiring middle-class observer of life. Godber has a knack of luring you into intriguing situations then taking you deeper than you expect. So we see the characters despise each other’s social status while being more than a little jealous of each other’s lives. My only slight complaint is that the middle class boy gets all the good points in the argument; the inarticulate Chelsea doesn’t get a chance to say anything about the warmth, companionship, sharing and togetherness of working-class life. Like Len in Lost she is a compliant victim. In this pair of plays it would have been good to see a bit more of the joyful side.

Nevertheless this is a fascinating and often hilarious brace of productions. Matthew Booth and Jackie Naylor are superb, giving subtle and completely natural performances in what is, for them, a marathon evening. Don’t miss them.

Roger Osborne

Lost and Found continue at the SJT: check for dates www.sjt.uk.com