Rita, Sue and Bob Too / A State Affair

by Andrea Dunbar, Robin Soans

When it first came out, Rita Sue and Bob Too caused a sensation for it's frank portrayal of child sexuality in a Northern Town; the fact that the play was based on the writer's own experience only added to the furore. Max Stafford-Clark originally commissioned Rita, Sue and Bob Too for the Royal Court in 1982. Eighteen years later, he returned with a group of Out of Joint actors to the Bradford estates that Andrea knew. A State Affair is a record of what they found.

"A genius straight from the slums" - Shelagh Delaney (on Andrea Dunbar) Mail on Sunday

"This is life, the facts are there … these things do go on - maybe not in every circle, but certainly in mine" - Andrea Dunbar, Yorkshire Post, 1986

Out of Joint's production of Rita Sue and Bob Too and A State Affair premiered at the Liverpool Everyman Theatre in October 2000.

Genres: Plays, Drama

192 pages, Paperback

First published October 19, 2000

About the author

Andrea Dunbar (22 May 1961 – 20 December 1990) was an English playwright. She wrote The Arbor (1980) and Rita, Sue and Bob Too (1982), an autobiographical drama about the sexual adventures of teenage girls living in a run-down part of Bradford, West Yorkshire. She wrote most of the adaptation for the film Rita, Sue and Bob Too (1987). The Mail on Sunday described Dunbar as "a genius straight from the slums".[1][2]