WINSLOW HOMER is one of the most respected figures in US art history, whose painting, Inside the Bar, Cullercoats, 1882, hangs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York.

He arrived in 1881 in the small, windswept village of Cullercoats, in Northumberland, where he immortalised the lives of fisherfolk in an emotive grey turbulence of light.

Playwright Shelagh Stephenson mixes her palette of real characters with fiction to bring his models to life in this production.

Maggie (Helen French), Belle (Zita Frith) and Sally (Catherine MacCabe) inhabit the shoreline – making nets, unloading the boats and putting the world right with their earthy humour.

These are three of the girls Homer painted. They, along with Joe and a middle-class family, inhabit Stephenson’s brilliant expose of Homer’s life in the North-East.

Gary McCann’s set is a huge, simple wooden curve of boards, reminiscent of a boat or a wave, and is used to great effect as a backdrop for Homer’s paintings.

Precocious teenager Fanny (Amy McAllister) captures the flavour of the play. She’s the perfect outsider who is allknowing, but not quite all there, with her beguiling innocence and her charming ability to imitate everyone she hears.

McAllister is so watchable, I couldn’t take my eyes away from her.

South Shields actor Ron Cook gives a great portrayal of Homer, and Phillip Correia’s Joe – a perfect gentle chap – is also out of place, as is Rosaleen (Lizzy McInnerny), a Dubliner and Fanny’s mother.

Among the first night audience was Susan Johnson, from Monkseaton, the granddaughter of Maggie, who features prominently in Homer’s paintings.

Max Roberts directs this extraordinary production with his precise Live Theatre panache, and with perfect musical arrangements by the Unthanks.

■ Until May 22, 7.30pm. Box office: 0191-232-1232

Helen J Brown