Rita, Sue and Bob today: Andrea Dunbar's truths still haunt us

Dunbar's bleakly funny tale of a menage a trois captured 80s austerity. What can her defiant heroines tell audiences today?

'This is life," Andrea Dunbar told the Yorkshire Post in 1987, defending the film version of her play Rita, Sue and Bob Too. "The facts are there." Dunbar was adamant about telling the truth in her work, insisting "you write what's said, you don't lie". Her second play, an unvarnished tale of a married man having an affair with his teenage babysitters, still has that startling matter-of-factness today.

As a single mother living in poverty on a council estate in Bradford, Dunbar had a perspective that has rarely been shared on major stages. It's hard to imagine a play like The Arbor, the autobiographical script she wrote as a teenager, making it to the stage now. In another age of austerity, under another Tory government, putting on her work is an implicitly political gesture.

Related: How we made Rita, Sue and Bob Too

When Bob takes turns having sex with the two girls in his car, it's awkward, bum-jiggling and intensely funny

Related: 'An extraordinary piece of work': Jane Horrocks on the return of Road, an anti-austerity battle cry