HAVING lunch with playwright Arnold Wesker is one thing. Meeting his wife, Dusty, is something else, especially when you’re directing Roots, Wesker’s play based on Dusty’s home life in Norfolk.

That’s what Nottingham Playhouse Theatre’s Andrew Breakwell is doing at the Mercury Theatre, in Colchester.

Roots is a co-production between the Mercury and Nottingham. Andrew’s been the educational director at the Midlands theatre since 1999, but before that was at Ipswich’s Wolsey Theatre.

“It was an absolute privilege meeting Wesker,” Andrew smiles. “When you think of all the playwrights, like Pinter and Osborne, who are no longer with us, he’s the last of that generation.

“I had met him before when we did Chicken Soup with Barley in Nottingham, and he was very generous with his time then.

“What made this time even more special was the chance to meet Dusty.”

Roots is the centrepiece of the Wesker Trilogy, which also includes Chicken Soup with Barley and Talking about Jerusalem.

Described as one of Wesker’s kitchen sink dramas, it bubbles with humour, imagination and compassion.

It follows Beatie Bryant returning home to her rural roots in Norfolk, bursting with ideas and full of love and admiration for her bright Jewish boyfriend Ronnie.

Her mind is awash with Ronnie’s ideas on politics and culture and she is keen to share them all with her family.

Beatie recounts stories about her wonderful life in London and her new-found philosophy, desperately hoping her family won’t let her down when Ronnie comes to meet them and not foreseeing the crisis that will challenge her to finally speak for herself.

“The play is dedicated to Arnold’s wife,” Andrew adds. “Her family came from Norfolk and that’s where he met her.

“It’s a play about that girl he met, except with universal truths as relevant today as they were then.”

Colchester actress Natasha Rickman plays Beatie. She is joined by Mercury regulars Roger Delves-Broughton, Gina Isaac, Adrian Stokes and Tim Treslove.

The production opens this week at the Mercury and, as well as Colchester, the show will tour to Hull and Stoke before ending up at the Nottingham Playhouse in May.

* Roots, Mercury Theatre, Balkerne Gate, Colchester. April 13-28.

Tickets £9.50 to £21 01206 573948 www.mercurytheatre.co.uk