THE boisterous cast of James Graham's witty political drama This House will run amok from tonight at the West Yorkshire Playhouse, where the Quarry Theatre has been transformed into the 1974 House of Commons.

Former Univeristy of Hull student Graham invites Yorkshire audiences to heckle their way through history as he explores the turbulent Seventies' era of the hung parliament – 1974 was the year of two General Elections, in February and October – and questions whether anything has really changed.

In the second Graham play to be staged in Yorkshire in 2018, after The Culture: A Farce In Two Acts at Hull Truck Theatre, fist fights break out in the parliamentary bars as the Government hangs by a thread and Britain’s political parties’ battle to change the future of the nation, whatever it takes.

Focusing on the Conservative and Labour Whips' offices, Graham's play is not short of Yorkshiremen from the time, including Michael Cocks (played by Tony Turner), Walter Harrison (James Gaddas) and Joe Harper (David Hounslow). Yorkshire MPs feature too, such as Leeds East's Denis Healey, Barnsley's Roy Mason, Doncaster's Harold Walker, Rotherham's Brian O’Malley and Halifax's Shirley Summerskill.

This House heads north after runs at the National Theatre and in the West End and is now presented in Leeds by the National Theatre, Chichester Festival Theatre, Jonathan Church Productions and Headlong.

"I'm so grateful to the Members of Parliament from that period who gave me their recollections," says Graham. "It was a period of incomprehensible chaos, not unlike now, but infinitely more fraught with the Labour minority government that could have fallen at any time, but I'm amazed that a play that might be considered niche is now in its fifth incarnation."

Graham's play is a mixture of plenty of facts and some supposition. "There's the votes, the positions that politicians took and the speeches they made and then imagining what went on behind closed doors," he says. "It's all told through the Whips' offices at that time, all based on interviews I did."

Among the Seventies' MPs that Graham interviewed was Walter Harrison, the Labour MP for Wakefeld. "He was one of the most feared Whips at that time," says the playwright. "Tony Blair is on record as saying he was the one politician he was frightened of."

Graham has been delighted by politicians' response to the play. "What's been thrilling is that a lot of people featured in the play have come to see it, including Michael Heseltine watching himself waving the mace over his head," he says. Kenneth Clarke and Lord Owen (David Owen) are among those who have seen it too.

The drama of politics finds its match in the world of theatre. "The strongest stories combine a nation-changing event with great human stories," concludes Graham.

This House, Quarry Theatre, West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds, tonight until March 10. Box office: 0113 213 7700 or at wyp.org.uk