SHELAGH Delaney’s most successful play, written at the age of 19 and first staged in 1958, is so good that it would be difficult to make a bad job of it.

It needs to be staged with the minimum of fuss and Bijan Sheibani, resisting any urge to take liberties with characters, plot or script, has taken great care to invest this National Theatre production with a grittily intimate atmosphere that chimes with the compact surrounds of Trafalgar Studios.

Hildegard Bechtler’s set brilliantly captures the sad, shabbily claustrophobic post-war Salford flat in which mother Helen (Jodie Prenger) and daughter Jo (Gemma Dobson) wage their battles. It’s almost possible to smell the dirty old town outside, with its noxious gasworks, slaughterhouse and canal.