SOMEHOW the BBC missed out Hull from its week-long series of Blitz Cities on the 75th anniversary of the onset of German bombings of Britain.

Apparently no Hull celebrity was deemed appropriate to present it.

This was a bizarre oversight, given that the port of Hull was a key target, so much so that around 95 per cent of the city's housing was damaged or destroyed by the Luftwaffe, a fact that only became public knowledge in 1970. London alone in England suffered more destruction in the Second World War.

Plucky Hull had been expected to put on a brave face for the newspaper photographers and Pathe News, and its true story has lain buried in the rubble until Cleethorpes-born playwright Richard Vergette and Hull Truck artistic director Mark Babych saw fit to draw attention to the devastating bombing raids.

Incidentally, away from Hull, Vergette's father was left disabled when injured on active service in the war and his uncle was killed.York Press:

Christine Mackie and John Elkington

When Vergette taught at a Hull school, through a community play he "became aware of the size of the impact of the war on the city and region". He now addresses the subject in his own play, which takes the form of a family saga with fictional characters, set against a background of reality, rather than a documentary drama.

"The play is about Hull's capacity for survival and renewal, which is a message with a relevance today," says Vergette. "It has the spirit of Hull at its centre." Those words could apply equally to Hull Truck Theatre, a theatre that lost its way, its identity and soul after moving to Ferensway, but has revived and rediscovered its Hull spirit under Mark Babych's vigorous artistic directorship.

Dancing Through The Shadows is exactly the kind of play Hull Truck should be doing, and significantly it forms the first in a trilogy about the city's past, present and future to tie in with Hull's status as City of Culture 2017. Significantly too, Babych's cast has a community ensemble in support, while two of his five principals, Laura Aramayo and Jim English, are from the city. Such a recruitment policy once served John Godber so well at Hull Truck and it is good to see Babych restoring this practice.

Aramayo made her Hull Truck debut at 13 in Richard Bean's Under The Whaleback, performing in youth theatre shows there too, and now returns for the first time since training at the Arden School of Theatre to announce the full fledging of a Yorkshire talent that surely will fly high.

She plays Sylvia, a young fish factory worker from Hessle Road, with an errant younger brother (English's David) and a quiet, self-contained father (John Elkington's Maurice), who fought in the First World War and has gone into a shell after his wife died. Sylvia has had to grow up quickly to fill her mother's shoes.

At a dance, she meets Tom (Marc Graham), poetic and smart from smarter Hessle, but the shadow of war soon will divide them as much as the class differences personified by Tom's librarian mother, Grace (Christine Mackie).

York Press:

Jim English and Finlay McGuigan

Dawn Allsopp's set, with its contrast of a tree in full leaf and houses and streets broken by bombing, sets the scene for Vergette's beautifully written, well observed, warmly witty, deeply human study of love and loss in the most turbulent of circumstances.

It echoes Deborah McAndrew's First World War drama An August Bank Holiday Lark in its themes of the impact of war at home and Vergette pulls familiar emotional strings in the story's arc, but this only strengthens a play full of home truths, full of Hull, performed superbly, directed with passion and designed as if with the stench and fear of war in the nostrils. Matthew Clowes's sound design and Douglas Kuhrt's lighting complete an outstanding Hull production in the best Hull Truck traditions.

Dancing Through The Shadows, Hull Truck Theatre, until October 24, 7.30pm nightly, plus 1pm on October 15 and 21 and 2pm, today, October 17 and 24. Box office: 01482 323638 or hulltruck.co.uk