Talent is Victoria Wood’s 1978 comedy with songs which the writer/director/comedienne/pianist now revives in a new version for the Menier Chocolate Factory.

It’s talent night at Bunter’s nightclub and contestant Julie and her fat friend Maureen are waiting backstage. As they are plunged into a world of ukulele-wielding pensioners, crotch-grabbing comperes and some long-buried personal history, Julie and Maureen have to decide how lucky they really want to be.

Talent premiered at the Sheffield Crucible in 1978 before transferring to London, earning Wood the Evening Standard Award for Most Promising Playwright. A year later she starred alongside Julie Walters in a BAFTA-nominated television version of the play, the first time that the long-term collaborators had appeared on screen together.

Wood, who directs this production at the Menier, knows a thing or two about talent contests as she kicked off her career by winning the ITV talent show New Faces in 1974. She went on to become one of the UK’s best-loved stand-up comedians, as well as writing and acting in television sketch shows, sitcoms and drama series, including An Audience With Victoria Wood, Pat And Margaret, Dinnerladies and Housewife, 49. Acorn Antiques, a soap opera parody from Victoria Wood As Seen On TV, was later turned into a musical starring Walters and Celia Imrie which opened at the Theatre Royal Haymarket in 2005, directed by Trevor Nunn.

For more about Talent at the Menier Chocolate Factory, read the First Night Feature.