Red Ellen
Royal Lyceum Theatre
Edinburgh

YOU can only be grateful to learn about Ellen Wilkinson, the pioneering socialist MP who lead the Jarrow March in 1936 and, as minister of education under Attlee, introduced many school reforms in a short period, such as free milk and lunches, and raising the leaving age from 14 to 15.

But when you weigh her political life against the character on show in this Edinburgh/Nottingham/Northern Stage co-production, you are left pondering the choices made by writer Caroline Bird, and director Wils Wilson.

That Wilkinson was in fact a founder member of the Communist Party of Great Britain in 1921, and a successful novelist with two works of fiction on the shelf alongside her seven works of political history and theory, and a long-standing suffragist, feminist and organiser comes as a surprise.