HERE the words of the Spinster in Jim Cartwright’s state-of-the-nation play, Bed.

“There’s a smell rising, from where our tradition has been forsaken. It’s under beds and off the shore. Putrification. England hangs off the map, half scrounger, half whore,” she says as she re-makes the bed.

First uttered on the National Theatre stage in 1989, her cutting comments came ten years into Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government, but chime with today, as York troupe Old Bomb Theatre Company has been quick to note.

“Although written in and about the Eighties, Cartwright’s play proves a fantastic lyrical and dream-like piece, with seven old people in an enormous 30ft-wide bed and one disembodied head on a shelf, known as Sermon Head,” says artistic director Cecily Boys, whose production opens on Wednesday.

“They crave the comfort of sleep but restless memory and disturbances, dreams and songs sweep them up as they re-live their lives and enact their dreams of a forgotten England.

“Underlying this is a potent and fierce comment about the state of the nation in the 1980s. In light of recent events – the English Riots of August 2011 – Old Bomb wants to put the play to the test of time and translate its ideas to today using images of the riots.”

Cartwright’s Spinster talked of a morally sparse Britannia doing anything to get fat, as fast-fingered heathens stole her crown while mauling her derriere.

“Interestingly (or perhaps worryingly) parallels to this can be seen in David Cameron's speech after the 2011 riots,” says Cecily. “The Prime Minister alluded to many of these themes while speaking on the UK's ‘moral collapse’.

Under the banner of Broken Society, he listed: ‘irresponsibility; selfishness; behaving as if your choices have no consequences; children without fathers; schools without discipline; reward without effort; crime without punishment; rights without responsibilities’.

“Old Bomb Theatre wants to make a provocative and stirring piece, asking questions about 'Broken Britain' and the place of 'our tradition' in the country today. Without political agenda, we want to send our audience out questioning where we are as a nation when our youth are casually trying on stolen trainers as shops and streets burn around them, and what Jim Cartwright might write after ten years of this Conservative government.

“With mainly older actors and various references to the history of the nation, we would like to look at some of the characters as representations as common ideas of 'Britishness' and society's continuing divisions.”

As well as Bernadette Oxberry’s Spinster, Cecily’s cast includes Paul Baxter’s retired sea Captain, still lost at sea; Richard Easterbrook’s Charles, an English gent craving life on the open road; and Mandy Newby’s Bosom Lady, who silences the others’ whines with a shower of oversized bras.

“The play has the intimacy of each character's magical, yearned-for dreams, as well as the epic reach of questioning a whole nation's ideas of identity,” says Cecily. “It speaks powerfully about today's ideas of 'Britishness' in what is a significant year for Britain with the Olympics and the Diamond Jubilee.

“What we’re asking with this production is what keeps you awake at night, and pondering where this play now stands in comparison to 1989, when those English identities that used to hold fast but probably don’t any more.”

During the production run, Rachael Jolley, editorial director of British Future, will be in the chair for a post-show discussion and question-and-answer session with Cecily and her cast on February 29 on ideas of past, present and future identities in Britain.

British Future looks at issues of identity, integration and opportunity for the future, and more information can be found online at britishfuture.org/.

“Their report, Hopes And Fears has really informed our production,” says Cecily. “A good summary is in the Guardian article, Let This Year Be The Year We Decide To Be Proud Of Our Society, written by their director, at guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/jan/07/year-we-decide-proud-society.”

Old Bomb Theatre Company in Bed, The Studio, York Theatre Royal, Wednesday to March 3, 7.45pm plus 2pm matinee on the last day. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk

Did you know?

Cecily Boys is assisting Polly Teale on Shared Experience's new production of Mary Shelley at the West Yorkshire Playhouse.