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Click here to find out more about the Royal Court 2017 Season

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A Road, a wild night, a drunken tour guide, a journey to the gutter and the stars and back...

It can only be Road, Jim Cartwright's 1986 seminal play about the inhabitants of a nameless street in the north of England. It's the kind of play that crashed through traditions to give an explicit, filthily funny look at the reality of deprivation and unemployment. It premiered at the Royal Court Theatre Upstairs then, due to popular demand, transferred to larger Downstairs theatre with a promenade production starring Ian Dury.

Capturing a time and place where Thatcherism was at its strongest and families fought unemployment and dwindling sate support, Road is worlds away from the formal, fusty and mannered theatre that preceded it. With a narrator bringing the audience right into the action, Cartwright's script is set apart by an immediacy and intimacy.

Thirty years later and Road has become a modern classic, revived all around the country and studied as part of the National Curriculum. Now it returns to the Royal Court in a new production directed by John Tiffany, the man with the magic touch who brought Harry Potter to the stage.

It's a landmark revival, which introduce the play to a new generation and cast the state of the nation 1980s vision into a contemporary light.