Liverpool, 1960. A two-week strike by both dockworkers and seafarers has paralysed the port, and against a backdrop of picketing, marches and gaolings one local family plays out the changing times.

They’re the McDermott’s – Dad Jerry’s on the docks, son Jack’s on the ferries and Mum Joan and her sister Denise are in the council offices. While local Union leader Paddy Neary is carted off to Brixton Jail, the McDermott’s fight, laugh, sing and lie their way in and out of a time when post-war austerity was giving way to a decade of change.

The play looks and laughs at this changing world through the microcosm of one terraced house where the TV does battle with the upright piano. Jack croons the classics, Jerry sings skiffle and beat and Mum belts out the old bawdy sailor’s songs. “Keep the noise down, love, Z-Cars is on.”

Sex & Docks & Rock ‘n’ Roll carries on where last winter’s highly-successful show Riot, Rebellion and Bloody Insurrection left off – with Red Ladder reconnecting noisily with a great tradition of radical, political and entertaining theatre.