NOT only York Theatre Royal among North Yorkshire's theatres has been turning the spotlight on female stories and theatremakers with its Of Women Born programme of plays in 2017.

Up the A64 in Scarborough, the Stephen Joseph Theatre is presenting repertory productions of Jim Cartwright's The Rise And Fall Of Little Voice and Alan Ayckbourn's imminent new work, A Brief History Of Women, as the bookends to the summer season.

In between comes the regional premiere of Di And Viv And Rose, written by Amelia Bullmore, directed by Lotte Wakeham, designed by Frankie Bradshaw and performed by Polly Lister, Grace Cookey-Sam and Margaret Cabourn-Smith.

Bullmore's kitchen-sink comedy drama was a good spot by the SJT under Paul Robinson's blossoming artistic director from its Hampstead Theatre debut and subsequent West End transfer and it looks very much at home in The Round, where Polly Lister has already been such a hit this season with her electric storm of a performance as Mari Hoff in Little Voice.

Bullmore's play follows Di, Viv and Rose over three decades, starting in 1983 when they are thrown together in the red-brick university halls and at 42 Mossbank Road. Act One focuses on those hopeful student days, as they share a house; Act Two has a wider span of years, post-graduation from November 1986 to August 2010 as adulthood takes its unpredictable grip and relationships fracture.

Lister's Di is sporty, no-nonsense and lesbian; Cookey-Sam's Viv is a driven, guarded academic loner, who holds emotions in check beneath a chic front; Cabourn-Smith's Rose is a loose cannon, a bed-hopping free spirit with a lust for life, a love of sex and analogies and a casual relationship with her history of art course.

Bullmore enjoys "woman-watching", seeing how such different young women interact with each other in the hothouse of growing up at university, all to the accompaniment of period pop hits to top and tail the fast-moving scenes that combine humour with pathos, growing pains with blossoming, if far from smooth friendships.

Exit university and those friendships become more complicated, more strained, more distant, as they inevitably do, through the years of changing circumstances and differing experiences at home and abroad, at work and play, in motherhood and sisterhood.

The performances are terrific at all stages and in all ages; Bullmore's writing is sharply observed, witty, empathetic, truthful, caring, happy and sad, capable of surprises and twists, and Wakeham's direction has energy, insight, instinct for comedy and a feel for the darker sides of life.

The SJT's impressive 2017 continues to go from strength to strength, from Little Voice to Ayckbourn's revival of Taking Steps and now Di And Viv And Rose in full bloom.

Di And Viv And Rose, Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, until August 26. Box office: 01723 370541 or sjt.uk.com