It seems extraordinary now, but when the first production of Men Should Weep was staged, it proved a bigger hit in London than it ever had been at home.

It was just after the war and the Glasgow Unity Theatre had taken the play down to the Embassy Theatre in London, where everyone went absolutely wild for it — much more than they had in Glasgow. The Scottish critics had all said, “Oh God, another kitchen-sink drama.” But in London we must have had 10 curtain calls. It was an amazing reception.

Next week Oxford Stage Company is reviving the show, a testimony to its continuing appeal and relevance. Back then its success south of the border was unusual for a Scottish play, though from the very beginning we knew that Men Should Weep was a very special work. I was in every performance from the first night in Troon in 1947 until a last fling at the Theatre Royal in Glasgow in 1948. I played Edie, the 11-year-old daughter of Maggie, the central character. I was 22 at the time, but I was small.

What set the play apart was the fact that there was no compromise on language. It was written in Glasgow dialect and was way ahead of all the plays that followed it, such as Look Back in Anger, that some people say marked the great change away from “tennis anyone?” plays.

There was at least a special relationship with the Glasgow audiences, if not with the critics. When Maggie said she was pregnant, the audience would say, “Oh, the poor soul”. And though it was set in the depression of the 1930s, in 1947 people were living in the same situation that the writer, Ena Lamont Stewart, was describing.

The other strength of the play is the dominance of female figures. Maggie, the mother, is the main character and her sister, Lily, is the backbone that supports her. It was typical of the Scottish working class, where women were dominant in the house and the men were all wimps.

We had a lot of fun in the company. When Maggie used to go to the door to get the telegram that said her son had died from TB, the people doing the props would put the rudest, funniest message on the telegram, so she would have to come in and emote while reading something extremely risqué.

The thing about the Unity is that everybody worked for the same money and all the cast did the scene changes. There was no star system and we stayed in ghastly digs, but working in the ordinary theatre was never such fun as working for Unity.

Before Men Should Weep I had walked on stage as one of the Christians standing around in a Unity production of Androcles and the Lion by George Bernard Shaw. It was during the terrible winter when there was no coal. There was snow piled up in Sauchiehall Street above my head. We were on stage in cotton togas, visibly shaking, not from nerves, but the cold.

Most of the people in Unity — Roddy McMillan, Russell Hunter — came from places like the shipyards. They weren’t trained actors. When I first joined, after I’d been in art school, I was understudying and they thought I was posh because I didn’t happen to have a broad Glasgow accent.

I didn’t know Ena Lamont Stewart at the time we were doing the play, but I got to know her later when she was a librarian. In those days we’d say, “Oh Jesus, the author’s coming today,” and everyone would go round with their shoulders hunched, looking guilty. Ena said to me it was awful when she came to a rehearsal. She loathed it because she felt so ostracised and unwanted.

She did two plays for Glasgow Unity — Starched Aprons was the other one — and they were both great successes. She wrote a few short plays in the 1960s that were still stunningly good, on contemporary themes, but she was just forgotten about. It was very sad and she become very embittered in later years. So it’ll be wonderful if people come to see this production.

Men Should Weep, Citizens’ Theatre, Glasgow, September 6­10; MacRobert, Stirling, September 20­24; Dundee Rep, October 25­29

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