She could teach more folk round ‘ere about what’s bloody well important in their lives – when it comes down to it. What matters . . . That precious bit of you that gets buried in shit, and she’s there clearin’ it all away.
Delie is special and she’s won a trophy for picking up litter from the mayor. Every summer she goes on her holidays to her Aunty Brenda who runs a women’s domestic abuse refuge in a Yorkshire mining village. Delie and her Aunty Brenda and a pawnbroker called George who wears a dress are The Flannelettes – a Motown tribute band.
Delie is in her twenties but with a mental age of ten; when she meets Roma – who used to live on the streets in Rotherham – the two become best friends, sharing each others’ secrets.
By the award-winning writer of The Glee Club, The Flanelettes is a tough, uncompromising play which looks at love and violence in a shattered community, all playing to a bittersweet soundtrack of Sixties soul.