AFTER their summer on Britain's waterways, Marsden's Mikron Theatre Company are back on terra firma to present Canary Girls at Clements Hall, Nunthorpe Road, York, on Sunday afternoon.

Now in their 45th year, Mikron are travelling throughout the region with their celebration of the unsung heroes on the wartime home front in their latest energetic, fresh and original tale of everyday people whose lives are changed by history.

Written by Laurence Peacock and directed by Marianne McNamara, Canary Girls is a heartfelt, humorous and tender story of two sisters seizing the opportunities offered to women by the outbreak of the First World War as they become shell-workers in the local munitions factory.

For sisters Rose and Lizzie, their new lives offer them money, independence, excitement and political awakening, until they realise the danger of shell work and how their dreams of a new world are pulling them apart.

Original music by Yorkshire folk duo O'Hooley & Tidow complements the humour and pathos, romance and danger in Peacock's script, all performed by four singing, instrument-playing, character-swapping actors, Claire Burns, Stephanie Hackett, Matt Jopling and James McClean.

Playwright Laurence Peacock has joined Mikron for the first time this year after being selected from other hopefuls to undertake this commission, a challenge that he was excited to tackle. "Researching Canary Girls was absolutely fascinating," he says. "During World War One so much happened to change the position of women in such a short space of time. The only major problem I had was, how am I going to get 'Trinitrotoluene' (TNT) into a song?"

York Press:

Stephanie Hackett and Matt Jopling in Canary Girls. Picture: Peter Boyd Photography

To see if Laurence managed to do so, join Sunday's 4pm audience at Clements Hall in Mikron's second visit to York in 2016 after presenting their chocolate industry exposé, Pure, at the Scarcroft Allotment in June.

Mikron have been touring their "theatre anywhere for everyone" for five decades, in the spring and autumn by road and in the summer months on board their beloved historic narrowboat, Tyseley. This year is a special one for Tyseley as she celebrates her 80th birthday and her 41st anniversary of being the floating home to Mikron's actors.

Artistic director Marianne NcNamara explains Mikron's ethos: "I take the legacy of Mikron very seriously and our promise to make theatre everywhere for everyone. For 45 years, Mikron has toured to places that other companies don't, and that means we're often deep in heart of the countryside, with no venue nearby, or finding ourselves performing in the most unlikely of places: a boatyard, an allotment site, even inside a tunnel.

"Our shows are often performed outdoors and for a majority of them you don't even need to buy a ticket; we pass a [collection] hat around at the end. We love how informal our performances are, and make shows that we can all relate to, whether that's our shared history or our shared love of chocolate."

As ever, Will Hoedeman, from Scarcroft Allotment, is organising ticket sales for Mikron's York show. "I'm happy to say that filling seats for Mikron is getting easier and easier," he says.

"By two weeks ahead of Sunday's visit, we were just about a full house already, and of course Mikron will be back here in York in 2017 too, early summer al fresco at Scarcroft Allotment, early autumn in Clements Hall. So it's very easy to create traditions but maybe next year at Clements Hall, we'll need an evening show as well as the matinee."

Sunday's show has now sold out, but Will Hoedeman can be contacted by emailing willyh@phonecoop.coop to go on the returns list.