GREEN Hammerton company Badapple Theatre's latest On Your Doorstep tour is a revival of their backstreet football fairytale The Carlton Colliers.

Written and directed by company founder Kate Bramley, it stars Badapple regular Robert Angell, hotfoot from his summer turn as Father in Damian Cruden's production of The Railway Children at the National Railway Museum's Signal Box Theatre in York.

"The Railway Children finished on September 5, which gave Robert just 12 days to get ready and into character for the start of The Carlton Colliers’ tour on September 17, but knowing him as I do, that was plenty of time," says Kate. "He's well up to the task, especially having played the role previously in 2013.”

Kate's humorous play tells of a hard-up former pit village transformed forever, thanks to a touch of magic from a most unexpected quarter: its struggling football team.

"A hapless bunch of social outcasts and local league cast-offs are transported magically to a whole other level and we can only watch in wonder as their new-found success spills over to envelop the whole town," she says. "This is a story about a village, a story about love, optimism and yes, a story about football."

York Press:

Robert Angell, Fiona Organ and Robert Wade in The Carlton Colliers

Bramley sets her story in Carlton Flatts, a northern place where “nobody notices you’re doing nothing, ’cause there’s nothing for anyone to do” since the village pit closed: a stasis captured in the evocative folk music of Jez Lowe.

“But you have to dream, don’t you,” reckons the playwright, who gives the dreamer role, the escape route, to Jemmy, the sharp-shooter of the hapless Carlton Colliers football team, whose quality left foot could land him a contract with a League side. First, however, he must lead the Colliers out of trouble, Roy Of The Rovers style, and keep both feet out of his mouth in the presence of Nina.

The frank, no-nonsense, ever efficient Nina hates football, but doggedly runs her zumba classes and hopes her bit-part as a dancer on Coronation Street could be her ticket to bigger opportunities elsewhere.

Meanwhile, taciturn Chris (Robert Angell's role) has withdrawn to a barge, painted in camouflage to further hide him from life, but when he is left an allotment by a man to whom he has not spoken for 15 years, change beckons.

In Bramley’s head, The Carlton Colliers was always a love story. “Whether the love affairs with friends, football or hometown ever work out quite the way you expect is another story, but the love remains, just the same,” she says.

Without giving the plot away, the world does alter for each of her protagonists in a play where they bloom as much as the allotment at the back of the football pitch. It may be sited on Carlton Roadends, but as one road ends, new paths begin, as poetically symbolised by the presence of a multitude of parrots in the storyline.

York Press:

Robert Wade, Robert Angell and Fiona Organ in The Carlton Colliers

Nuggety northern humour, borrowed football sayings –courtesy of the likes of Bill Shankly – and love in its myriad forms are delivered in Bramley’s hymn to village life.

Angell is flanked in The Carlton Colliers by two new Badapple recruits as Jemmy and Nina: Hull actor Robert Wade, who attended Rose Bruford College, and Fiona Organ, from Whitby, who has performed with Reform Theatre Company, York company Theatre Mill, Planet Rabbit Productions and Pocket Panto. Songwriter Jez Lowe, incidentally, was nominated for two BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards this year.

The Carlton Colliers can be seen at Staveley and Copgrove Village Hall, on Wednesday, box office, 01423 339168; Appletreewick Village Hall, Thursday, 01423 339168; Gilling West Village Hall, Friday, 01748 823556/850302; Moorsholm Memorial Hall, Saturday, 01287 669418, and Campsall Village Hall, Sunday, 01302 700003/701036.

The tour continues at Thorganby Village Hall, October 14, 01423 339168; Elwick Women’s Institute Hall, October 15, 01423 339168; North Stainley Village Hall, October 16, 01765 635236 or 0797 109 3907; Lund Village Hall, October 17, 01377 217352 or 01377 219598, and Spotlight Theatre, Bridlington, October 18, 01262 601006 or Bridlington Blinds & Curtains. All performances start at 7.30pm.