Spitfire Girls by Tilted Wig Productions Review
Samuel Tracy and Laura Matthews in Spitfire Girls.
Written by Stacy for Theatre & Tonic
Disclaimer: Gifted tickets in exchange for an honest review
Some stories don’t roar—they resonate. Spitfire Girls, which took poignant and powerful flight at Darlington Hippodrome this week as part of its UK tour, is one such tale: a lyrical, ensemble-driven tribute to the women who flew under history’s radar, soaring with emotional depth, imaginative staging, and an unflinching sense of truth.
Set on New Year’s Eve in 1959, the play brings us into The Spitfire pub—a place battered by rain and time—where two former pilots reunite under flickering lights and heavier silences. Here, the present rubs against the past like old scars on weathered skin, and memories surge like storm waves. Through a series of carefully woven flashbacks and embodied remembrances, the production tells the little-known but deeply stirring stories of the women who once soared through the skies, side by side, with the Air Transport Auxiliary during WWII, in an era that barely recognised their bravery.
Laura Matthews anchors the show with a richly textured performance as Dotty—gritty, sharp, and bruised by time. Katherine Senior, who also penned the script, performs as Bett in the version I saw, sharing the role in a job share with Rosalind Steele. Senior brings stunning emotional clarity to a character caught in the undertow of unresolved grief, delivering a performance that is both precise and deeply felt. Kirsty Cox, playing both the commanding officer (C.O.) and Joy, brings sparkle and soul, balancing steely authority with warmth and mischief; her humour is like sunlight breaking through overcast skies. Meanwhile, Jack Hulland and Samuel Tracy offer sensitive, multi-role performances that colour the world around these women, sometimes ally, sometimes an obstacle, sometimes a ghost.
The direction by Seán Aydon is tender and precise, steering the ensemble through shifts in time and tone with clarity and grace. But it is Stephen Moynihan’s movement direction that grants the production its wings—literally. The choreography evokes flight through a gestural, poetic language of motion: arms arched like wings, torsos twisting in imagined turbulence, whole bodies tipping into the memory of sky. These aviation sequences are less re-enactments than reveries, where muscle memory becomes metaphor.
The design serves as a quiet powerhouse of storytelling, a black box on which to illuminate life. Sarah Beaton’s set is at once intimate and infinite. The pub is richly detailed—lived-in, weather-worn, real. But around its edges, fragments of memory seep through: a flight log here, a pilot’s scarf there, clues and echoes that disrupt the present with the past. As Beaton herself notes, the design centres on the grief and limbo state Bett exists in—it’s a world that is grounded, yes, but also suspended in time. This is a place where the past filters into the now in fragments, never whole, always shimmering just out of reach.
This fragmented, liminal feeling is masterfully enhanced by Peter Small’s lighting design. His light doesn’t just illuminate—it aches. Warm, amber glows cradle the pub scenes, while cold, spectral whites carve out memory like lightning across cloud. At times, the light feels like breath; at others, like searchlights scanning the soul. It captures perfectly the way grief distorts chronology—moments bleed into each other, flicker, vanish. The lighting feels sentient, guiding us through time not linearly but emotionally, intimately. Eamonn O’Dwyer’s sound design completes this sensory tapestry, with the hum of distant engines, the lilt of vintage songs, and the hush of the unsaid all pulsing just beneath the surface.
Spitfire Girls is more than a remembrance piece—it is a reclamation. These women are not wartime footnotes; they are the story. The production dares to show not only the soaring triumph of their flight, but the long descent into silence that followed. And yet, through this beautifully crafted act of theatre, their stories rise again. Spitfire Girls is a theatrical memory in motion—fragmented, fragile, and fiercely human. It reminds us that to fly is not only to rise, but to be remembered. And in this production, these women are remembered—brilliantly, and with love.
Spitfire Girls tours across the UK until 21 June 2025.
★★★★★
