Best known for the modern classics Road and The Rise And Fall Of Little Voice, Cartwright is a writer with a light touch whose plays speak very directly to audiences.
He has encouraged new writing with the Four Corners season (plays drawn from the four countries of the British Isles) and launched into West End successes such as The Rise & Fall Of Little Voice, Company and The Glass Menagerie.
Jane Horrocks Played LV in The Rise and Fall of Little Voice at the National theatre in 1992, then in the West End.
And if you have to ask "Judy who?", "The Rise and Fall of Little Voice" may not be your kind of play.
Promenade piece The Mill continues in Bradford, as does The Rise and Fall of Little Voice at the Duke's, Lancaster, which boasts a superb central performance from Rebecca Hutchinson.
In the UK, Pop Idol winner Will Young went on to star in Cabaret, while X Factor semi-finalist Diana Vickers soon found herself treading the boards in The Rise and Fall of Little Voice in London's West End.
