AS Britain marks 100 years since women first gained the right to vote, Philip Goulding delivers an all-female adaptation of Compton Mackenzie’s Whisky Galore.

Staged in a touring co-production by Oldham Coliseum Theatre, Hull Truck Theatre and the New Vic Theatre, the show visits York Theatre Royal from Tuesday to Saturday, then plays Hull Truck from May 2 to 12.

Mackenzie’s Whisky Galore was published in 1947, inspired by the sinking of the SS Politician off Eriskay in 1941. Within two years, it transferred from page to screen in a 1949 Ealing comedy, and now comes Goulding's new interpretation, in turn partly inspired by the true story of the Osiris Players, a troupe of female actors who toured the British Isles from 1927 to1963.

Paying tribute to the feisty, fearless all-female touring companies of the post-war years, Goulding's play finds the Pallas Players – Win, Doris, Flora, Bea, Aileen, Connie and Juliet – playing all the diverse characters from Mackenzie’s comedy under the dogmatic direction of the redoubtable Flora Bellerby.

They take us back to wartime 1943 and the Scottish islands of Great Todday and Little Todday, where disaster has struck; the whisky supply has dried up because of the war and tensions are running high, but relief comes when a ship carrying 50,000 cases of whisky is wrecked just offshore. Now it becomes every islander for themselves as they try to "save" as many bottles as possible before snooty Mr Waggett of the Home Guard can put a stop to their good fortune.

York Press:

Writer Philip Goulding, foreground, in rehearsal with Whisky Galore director Kevin Shaw

Meanwhile, two weddings are planned, one hinging on timid George Campbell finding the (Dutch?) courage to stand up to his disapproving mother; the other involving an English sergeant’s love for the daughter of a whisky thief, in a production directed by Coliseum artistic director Kevin Shaw with a cast of Sally Armstrong, Lila Clements, Isabel Ford, Christine Mackie, Alicia McKenzie, Joey Parsad and Shuna Snow.

"We had a list of plays we wanted to do and my agent thought Whisky Galore was the best one, and once I read it, I could see why," says Philip Goulding. "Then I had to think about how to reinvent it, and I'd been reading about touring companies of the mid-20th century: Compass Players, Adelphi Players, and Osiris Players, Nancy Hewins’ all-female touring company, which began in 1927.

"I didn’t want to write a play about a company like the Osiris Players – Imogen Stubbs has already done that – but wanted to pay tribute to those women by making a show set in 1955 featuring a fictional company of that kind. Our Nancy is Flora Bellerby, and our Whisky Galore is her adaptation for her company, the Pallas Players."

Philip was keen too to create more roles for women. "After a couple of days of rehearsal I stopped thinking of them as women playing men, but then occasionally I'd remember it and think, 'this is an interesting thing to do'," he says. "With these companies, where they being political? Were they being feminist?

"Flora probably wouldn’t label herself a ‘feminist’, although she obviously is a feminist, but her purpose with her theatre company was not political in that sense. She might have believed there is simply ‘less faff without men. Gals just get on with things'."

York Press:

Shuna Snow, left, Lila Clements and Alicia MCkenzie in Whisky Galore

Goulding's version is not a play within a play, he stresses. "I tried to avoid that idea, because a play within a play is not as important as the story of re-creating a production of Whisky Galore in 1955. If you have a play within a play, you have to close that out again," he says, more interested in showing how Flora would have directed her cast of seven with plenty of doubling of roles for the audience to enjoy.

"Apparently Osiris always toured with seven people as that's how many people they could fit in with the set and props. Nancy went in the Rolls Royce with her favourite at the time; the others had to squeeze into an old ambulance with the set!"

Whisky Galore has completed its run at Oldham and moved on to Basingstoke – not with the cast and set in an old ambulance, you understand – and York and Hull come next. Philip has enjoyed how the play has turned out. "If you want it to be like you first thought it, then you should write novels," he says. "But with theatre, it's all about seeing what others bring to it."

Tickets for York Theatre Royal are on sale on 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk; Hull Truck Theatre, 01482 323638 or hulltruck.co.uk