CLIVE Sullivan's life was all too short and so was the first run of Dave Windass's play last May.

The week sold out, prompting Hull Truck to grant Sully a comeback, in keeping with a rugby league career that defied the odds as Sullivan, the black Welshman from Splott, won the Challenge Cup with both Hull clubs.

Club colours are prominent in the audience, worn by men and women alike, as fans of Hull Kingston Rovers and Hull FC sit side by side in celebration of Hull's most famous sporting adopted son.

The scene recalls the memorial service for the World Cup-winning Great Britain captain after he died of cancer aged 42.

Hull has a more permanent reminder of the try-scoring prowess of the flying winger: the city's busiest road, Clive Sullivan Way, or rather "Clive Sullivan No Way", as taxi driver and Hull FC fan Max (Lee Green) bemoans after it jams up following a crash.

Max is stood by the roadside with his gobby fare, East Hull chav Chelle (Amy Thompson, replacing Natalie Blades).

He is cursing all things Hull council; she is fretting over picking up her children, when the spirit of Sully (Fidel Nanton) emerges in vintage rugby gear, as if released from a sepia-tinted photograph.

Reclaiming his road, Sully promises to help Max and Chelle if they help him to tell his life story.

Looking around the stage, you would be forgiven for thinking the materials would tax even Blue Peter's John Noakes: only a strip of Tarmac, two discarded beer crates and a chair.

However, Windass's script does Sully proud with its broad yet local humour, big emotions and cup-tie sense of drama. Just as Sully overcame his potentially crippling calcified legs, then this melodramatic play rises above its prosaic location with its stirring story, rousing music and video projections.

Grown men will be grateful for the darkness of the theatre as the tears flow at the finale, and Nanton's performance is even more moving than last time, while Green and the gum-chewing Thompson are game allies in Gareth Tudor Price and Martin Barrass's heart-pumping production.

Amid all the on-going building in Hull, couldn't one more edifice be erected: a statue to Sully?


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