4/5

Scuttlers were Manchester’s original street gangs, operating throughout the city in the late Victorian period.

Mainly based in the streets around the cotton mills of Ancoats, the gangs of youngsters — some as young as 12 — engaged in brutal turf wars with rival gangs often just one street away.

Rona Munro was inspired to write this play after reading an article about a skirmish involving scuttlers in 1880. In the aftermath of the riots that hit the city in the summer of 2011, she was struck by the similarity between both events.

The play tells the story of the gang controlling Bengal Street in Ancoats and its rivalry with the neighbouring gang from Prussia Street.

Although the gangs were led by and involved mostly young boys, what makes Munro’s play even more intriguing is the fact that she has placed four strong young women characters at the heart of the drama.

Through them the corrupting influence of the new industrial revolution and the severe poverty inflicted on communities is madse explicit.

The relentless noise, tedium and poverty created a powder keg in the festering streets crowded around the huge woollen mills of the city.

Director Wils Wilson and designer Fly Davis create a real sense of the noise, filth and mayhem that the fledgling industrial working class had to endure with the introduction of the new factories.

Musician Denis Jones ratchets up the tension relentlessly with his eerie urban industrial soundscape. The repetitive heavy beat evokes the sheer mind-numbing tedium of the cotton mill that permeated every minute of the workers’ lives.

The authorities’ response to the scuttlers was to increase the penalty for those involved in gang fights but this failed to make any impact. It was only when the city council introduced youth clubs that the the fighting died down.

Munro ends her play with today’s young people walking the same streets that once flowed with blood. With the vicious cuts imposed on local authorities leading to the closure of youth centres, boredom may yet again drive young people into street warfare.

Runs until March 7, box office: royalexchange.co.uk