'The Mortal Ash' is set in South Yorkshire sometime in the 1990s, and follows the lives of ordinary people living on a council estate. The Wheatley family are the victims of an accident, which has changed their lives. Bitterness and warfare of the internecine variety is familiar everyday stuff to most of us. The events leave grieving parents and a dead child within a community which is both unforgiving and anxious to apportion blame anywhere but within themselves. The play explores the feelings, the emotions, the idealism and principles which motivate and de-motivate individual family members. It was first performed at the Bush Theatre, London, in 1994.