The real-life story of a group of lesbians who set up a garage in Sheffield in the 1980s is the setting for this new musical. Five female car mechanics in boiler suits enter singing ‘Go with Gwenda’s’. Carol, the boss, has named the garage after the famed woman racing driver Gwenda Stewart.
As lesbians the group is the target of prejudice and harassment, their story explained in the song ‘None of the Happened Here’ – except it did happen. The song is perhaps a denial of their lesbianism they have to make throughout their lives. Carol, the most grounded of the women, is played with strength by Eva Scott. As boss, she is concerned that they should not be too political or ‘we’ll lose us lease.’ She explains the origin of Gwenda’s: women had trained and qualified as mechanics but were excluded from employment in an all-male field and so set up for themselves.
Each of the women’s stories are firmly rooted in the actual experiences of people in and around the actual garage in the Socialist Republic of South Yorkshire. The fight of Bev to foster children explores the injustices against lesbians as she has to pretend to be straight. In doing so, she denies the existence of Terry, her girlfriend; ‘I can’t afford to be a lesbian’, she says. In turn, Terry sings of the racism she has experienced and her hurt at being rejected by Bev, ‘I am a Family of One’. Terry is sexually active, and as a black woman brings a sense of what is now called intersectionality: discrimination over sexuality, gender and ethnicity.
The characters include Dipstick the apprentice played by the puck-like Lucy Mackay who adds some fun. She is addicted to roguish political action like painting slogans on advertising hoardings and throwing eggshells filed with paint at porn shops. Georgina Coram adds verve and a bit more plot development playing Feona, a customer, a married ingenue in a Laura Ashley dress who, through the course of the show, discovers her inner lesbian.
Both Sia Kiwa as Terry and Georgina Coram as Feona have great voices, but each have only one song to show off their vocal range, most of the fifteen songs are choruses of repeated lines sing by the entire cast.
There is a strong sense of history to the piece, set in a past of the battle against Thatcherism, the banning of library books with gay characters and the right for gay people to have children. The show is said to be ‘dismantling the patriarchy one spark plug at a time’. Though a worthy play with good intentions, it lacked that spark.
The characters are generally very supportive of each other which is great for the sense of feminist solidarity, but not really from the musicals textbook which favours a physical enemy. The great threat is Section 28, an absurd piece of legislation of 1988 which attempted to ban the ‘promotion’ of homosexuality. Unfortunately for dramatic tension, the defeat of Section 28 did not happen until the beginning of this century, way outside the remit of this musical.
The night I was there the show was encouraged by a tremendously supportive audience, every one of whom I guess will have been in support of the show’s political message, but singing from the same hymn sheet does not alone make a successful show.
Venue: Southwark Playhouse Borough
Playwright: Nicky Hallett
Music: Val Regan
Lyrics: Val Regan in collaboration with Nicky Hallett
Cast: Nancy Brabin-Platt, Georgina Coram, Liz Kitchen, Sia Kiwa, Lucy Mackay, Eva Scott
Duration: 2 hours 10 minutes including interval
Until: 29 November 2025