Powerful, challenging and laugh out loud funny, this tale of a group of black men who get together to ramble around the Yorkshire countryside is an extraordinary piece of work.

Written by Leeds rapper Testament, directed by Dawn Walton and based on Yorjkshire's real Black Men's Walking Group, Black Men Walking succeeds in making strong points about race, identity and society through the tools of wonderful acting, a whip-smart script, stirring music and poetry and beautiful stage direction and movement.

We join our three walkers as they set out for a hike in the Peak District – “in and out of God’s country”. The scenery is spectacular but the weather is closing in. Fog drifts across the stage, itself simply set with a sloping path and pile of grit millstones – iconic objects familiar to anyone who has visited the area and which serve as a totem, being created by man from nature but once again absorbed by the wild.

Thomas (St Kitts-born Tyrone Huggins) is the elder of the group, a mine of knowledge; Matthew (Trevor Laird) is a middle-class doctor from the Home Counties with a white wife, and Richard (Zimbabwe-born, London-raised Tonderai Munyevu) is the ever-cheerful, chocolate-loving Ghanaian. They walk for different reasons, but largely to find themselves, assert their presence and reclaim the land on which their black forefathers walked: “black in the white rose”.

The action moves from comedy to drama as the three – described, hilariously, as “a black Last of the Summer Wine” set off on their walk but get enveloped by mist and snow, losing their way. Thomas is haunted by ghosts – portrayed with gorgeously graceful movement (credit to movement director Steve Medlin) by dancer, poet, musician and actress Dorcas Sebuyange.

She finds her shape in Ayeesha – a young rapper also lost on the moors. But who is there to save who... and is it fate?

The prodiuction, jointly staged by the black-led Eclipse Theatre Company and Manchester's Royal Exchange Theatre Company, is a telling insight into the real lives of black Britons and holds an uncomfortable mirror up to how we all behave and how far - or indeed, whether at all - we have laid to rest the histroric spectres of racism and prejudice.

This must be made required viewing in every school. Beautiful, heartwarming, shocking and moving, it is very strong stuff indeed.

5/5