Spitfire Girls
Photo credit: Ant Robling
Review by Andrew Clarke
The best way to put history on stage is to remember that the audience is there for a good time. The best way to do that is to tell a story not present a university lecture. Happily, writer/actor Katherine Senior - despite years of extensive research - does just that. She has come up with an immersive, heartwarming story, which is full of authentic detail but wears its learning lightly.
The characters in this wonderful, new play are composites of the real life women who flew the newly manufactured aircraft to their allocated airfields, so they could defend Britain from enemy attack during the Second World War.
Spitfire Girls tells the story of two sisters - the sensible, protective Bett (Katherine Senior) and the flighty Dotty (Laura Matthews) - who, in 1943, escape their rural life by joining the newly-formed Air Transport Auxiliary (ATA).
The sisters, although very different in character, share a close bond; one which, on occasion, causes friction and competition.
They are posted to the same station at Hamble Ferry, where Dotty proves herself to be a natural pilot. From their busy flight days, we learn that these women are not only tasked with delivering multiple aircraft everyday, but that they also fly unarmed, are without radios and run the risk of being shot down by marauding fighters.
What comes across clearly is that, although this is a challenging job, there is also a wonderful spirit of camaraderie between the women and the male ground crew – although, as Scottish ATA pilot, Joy (Kirsty Cox), reports, some of the male pilots at the operational airfields were unable to believe that a ‘wee lass’ could land a Wellington bomber on her own, and insisted on searching the aircraft for the real male pilot who was surely hidden away as a prank. He was never found.
As a result of their skill (and a determined campaign from ATA founder, Pauline Gower) the female ATA pilots were the first women to receive equal pay in Britain.
Photo credit: Ant Robling
This play, filled with humour and acute character observations, is also decorated with incidental historical detail which adds immeasurably to the atmosphere, but doesn’t clog up the narrative or the pacing of the show.
It opens on New Year’s Eve 1959, at a pub called The Spitfire. The landlady, preparing for a busy night, is Bett. It is clear that the events of the war have cast a long shadow over her life. Photos and memorabilia from her days in the ATA cover the walls.
The sets are simple and atmospheric.
A raised stage of bare floorboards, painted with an RAF roundel, serves as the floor of the pub and their barrack room, while chairs and period tables/dressers create the pub, the flight station’s lounge and the CO’s office. This visual set dressing is augmented by a wonderful period soundtrack which anchors the piece in a readily identifiable time and place – great work by Katherine Senior and director Sean Aydon.
Spitfire Girls is a tribute to the skills and heroism of these female pilots, and tells a touching, human story of the changing relationship between two sisters whose lives are shaped by circumstances beyond their control.
A wonderful new play, rich in humour and insight, with a lot to say about family relations.
Spitfire Girls is at New Wolsey Theatre until April 5.
FOR FULL SHOW DETAILS AND BOOKING LINK, CLICK HERE