SHAMELESS and Waterloo Road regular Rebecca Ryan has grown to know Jo, the 17-year-old tearaway in Shelagh Delaney's A Taste Of Honey, very well.

The Manchester actress first played teenage writer Delaney's defiant, pregnant protagonist last year in Tony Cownie's revival of this 1961 northern kitchen-sink drama at the Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh in January and February last year, and when artistic director Mark Babych was looking for his Jo for his Hull Truck debut in 2014, he asked Rebecca to audition.

"As soon as I first read it for theEdinburgh audition, I was dying to do this play," she says. "I was lucky enough to get it and had a fantastic time doing it. I don't think Mark saw it but he heard I'd done it and wanted me to apply for the Hull show."

Rebecca arrives at York Theatre Royal on Tuesday for the last week of Babych's touring production. Looking back, she says: "It's been like doing two different shows. The one in Edinburgh was on a revolve stage with no live music and we just went from scene to scene on the revolve, whereas Mark has live music from the period performed by the cast and one constant set design."

Actors invariably feel there is always more to bring to a role than can be delivered, a sentiment that Rebecca shares. "Absolutely. I think you can be doing a show for years and years and still be able to find new things in it," she says. "Though I've been doing this production for 17 weeks now, I'm still trying new things out – and that also saves me from the possibility of getting bored with it."

She notes the contrast with the more precise form of television acting, as required to play Debbie Gallagher from the age of 11 in Channel 4's Shameless and later Vicki McDonald in BBC1's Waterloo Road.

"You're more in control of the performance on stage, whereas in TV work you're under the control of the editor, so you're not sure what they're leaving in or taking out," she says.

Rebecca, 23, has loved playing Jo, a teenager who is desperate to break free from her wayward mother, Helen, in 1959 Salford.

Jo’s instinct for survival and pursuit of happiness leads her to fall in love with Jimmy, a sailor on shore leave, but, abandoned by her mother, she has her courage tested again when Jimmy returns to sea and she discovers she is pregnant.

Flying in the face of convention, Jo moves in with her friend Geoffrey, a young art student, who assumes the role of surrogate father to her unborn child. As their relationship deepens, Jo discovers that her independent spirit is both her torment and her salvation.

"The thing with Jo is that you never tire of her because she changes all the time, which is frightening in one way but keeps me guessing about her, and that's partly down to her young age. You have to get into the mind of a 17-year-old. I'm 23 now but playing a schoolgirl, and I'm still building on what I did in Edinburgh last year."

It is important to remember too, says Rebecca, that Delaney was only 18 when she began writing the play.

"It's always in your mind that the script is so powerful and inspirational because she was so young. It makes it even better as a voice for young people as it has such a vibrant attitude, saying things that the older generation wouldn't have the bottle to say. She's never afraid to say what she thinks," she says.

"Shelagh Delaney is very inspirational to all young women, but especially for someone like me who was born not far from Salford, in Prestwich."

Hull Truck Theatre and Derby Theatre present A Taste Of Honey at York Theatre Royal, Tuesday to Saturday, 7.30pm plus 2.30pm Saturday matinee. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk