Written by acclaimed playwright Caroline Bird and directed by the Royal Lyceum Theatre‘s Artistic associate Wils Wilson, Red Ellen is a new play about the Labour MP Ellen Wilkinson, who was often on the right side of history, but the wrong side of life. Caught between revolutionary and parliamentary politics, she fights with an unstoppable, reckless energy for a better world. Running (quite literally on occasion) into the likes of Albert Einstein and Ernest Hemingway, she battles to save Jewish refugees in Nazi Germany, campaigns for Britain to aid the fight against Franco’s fascists in Spain and leads two hundred workers in the Jarrow Crusade, marching from Newcastle to London to deliver a petition to end unemployment and poverty. A vital member of Churchill’s cabinet, she has affairs with Communist spies and Government ministers, but still finds herself on the outside looking in.