Only Fools and Horses star Tessa Peake-Jones at Birmingham REP

The show is heading to Birmingham REP from February 21 to March 3 and is being directed by Olivier Award-winning nominated Rachel Kavanaugh, starring Tessa Peake-Jones, best known for her work in Only Fools and Horses, and Aden Gillett.

It focuses on the story of a young man, Ronnie Winslow, who is expelled from the Royal Navy College for stealing a five-shilling postal order. His entire family are pulled apart by the repercussions of the charge.

Set against the values of 1910 Edwardian London, the Winslow family fight to clear his name or face social ostracism as the case becomes a national scandal. Based on a real-life event, The Winslow Boy is a courageous and often delicately humorous window into the class and political hypocrisy of the time.

And, with recent court cases such as Liam Allen, the 22-year-old Londoner cleared of rape after it was revealed police withheld 40,000 messages sent by his accuser, it shows that little has changed.

Tessa has enjoyed being part of the classic drama.

“The show is really the story of a young boy who is sent home from college after he supposedly stole a five shilling postal order. They investigate and find him guilty and he is expelled. Really, the whole play centres on whether that 14-year-old boy did or did not steal and whether his family support him.

“His father and his entire family, at great cost and great emotional cost, decide to defend the son. He gets a lawyer. He thinks the college behaved badly and jumped to conclusions. It becomes a play about innocence and guilt. It’s fascinatingly written. People care about the young person, that’s at the heart of the play, but they also watch the impact on the entire family.”

Tessa plays the boy’s mother and she sees halfway through the play how costly the scandal is. The family loses money and everything they’ve worked so hard for throughout their life seems gradually to be eroded because of the father’s determination to stay true to his principles.

“It’s about family. Do they rally round? It’s a very modern theme.

“Grace, my character, has a real meltdown and wonders why they are going on with it. She can see it is destroying her husband’s health and they can’t afford to pay the doctors. They are losing money all the time on the court case with huge solicitors’ bills. She finds it hard to justify it and she has a point. But it’s a moral dilemma.

“Do you give in because it’s easier to give in and live a quiet life and don’t make a fuss. Or, do you fight on, morally, because you want to prove a point. I think it’s still very relevant today. None of it has changed. There are politicians with caravans of press outside their homes today.

“And there have been men charged with rape late who protested their innocence and where court cases have collapsed. You wonder whether people have the chance these days to prove their innocence because the world can comment and Tweet abuse and threaten people.”

The play is beautifully written. Terence Rattigan sets things up with remarkable skill. His plots are good and the narrative is strongly constructed. That makes it all the easier for Tessa and co to play. “You know when you are saying the dialogue that he’s thought about each line and what it means. The dialogue is so strong.”

For Tessa, the play marks a welcome return to the theatre. The woman who played Raquel in the BBC sitcom Only Fools and Horses decided not to go on the road for 30 years, while she was bringing up her children.

“I haven’t done ‘going away theatre’ for nearly 30 years. As soon as my children were born I stopped. Before my daughter was born, Brum REP was my second home and I’ve been recently to see a friend in a show. The front of house is great. “I love theatre. The feeling of live bodies receiving what you’re doing and commenting via laughter or being moved is a very special privilege as an actor. I have always thought that since I was at drama school. People carry you along with their feelings.

“Of course you don’t get that on telly but you get other things that are exciting. If you do a take that’s really working, you love it. You also get the luxury of doing things again. You can work and work and work until you get it absolutely right. On TV, you can perfect it more.

“Being part of a show like Only Fools and Horses is very special. When it came to an end it was really sad and we cried a lot. Each time the specials ended, we thought there’d be another. In fact, sadly, the year the writer, John Sullivan, died, he was writing another Christmas episode. He would have bought it back again. He was a genius. His knowledge of comedy and those characters was great. It was one of the greatest privileges to be in that show and I learned so much from the characters in the programme. David Jason and Nick Lyndhurst were experts.

“But it’s nice to be back in the theatre and it’s great to have had a varied career. I guess for me, the most challenging thing for the next 20 or 30 years will be having those choices. I don’t want to know what I’ll be doing next but I do know that I love an actor’s life.”