Writer: Katherine Senior
Director: Sean Aydon
Most people think they know about the pilots in World War 2 – those men who took off from their airfields to fight combat missions. Far fewer people will have considered how those aircraft got to the airfields in the first place, nor that a number of the delivery pilots were women. That is the background to Spitfire Girls, a tale of two sisters who apply to join the Air Transport Auxiliary, an organisation which became famous for using women in flying roles during the war – and for paying them the same as they paid their male colleagues.
It’s an important story to tell, if only to bring these women back into people’s minds, but this is not a piece about the inner workings of the ATA. It’s a story about love and loss, about sibling rivalry and about attitudes.
Years after they join up together, sisters Bett and Dotty who have been separated by the war meet in the bar of the Spitfire pub. Questions are asked and memories surface. This provides a neat device to bookend the play, as the answers eventually become clear.
Bett (Katherine Senior in a job share with Rosalind Steele) is the older – serious and very protective of her younger sister Dotty (a bubbly Laura Matthews), she arranges for them to be posted together. So it is that they share a lot of the same experiences and come across the same attitudes, beliefs and stereotypes – in particular that women can’t possibly be pilots and there is work for them to do in the home instead. This view is embodied by their father (a gruff but caring Jack Hulland), who wants them on his farm but whose own experiences give him reasons beyond the help they provide or a misogynistic view of a woman’s place. Comradeship and support is provided in the form of their colleague Joy, and their Commanding Officer, both roles played by an impressively versatile Kirsty Cox, with Samuel Tracy providing the love interest, and small but pivotal role in a play that is really about women.
Sarah Beaton’s design is straightforward, the familiar roundel a constant reminder of the setting with a simple raised stage and basic furniture putting us into the pubs, the sisters’ kitchen, the airbase. As such it works very well, teamed with Peter Small’s lighting which serves to highlight important moments and assist transitions, creating a good flow to the production.
Katherine Senior’s script highlights many vital issues, but it includes dialogue which is occasionally unconvincing and which leads to one or two patchy moments in performance. The Spitfire pub scenes create a neat way to open and close the piece, though the opener is maybe a tad more drawn-out than ideal (it’s not a long play) and the end – despite the inevitable sting in the tail – feels a little anti-climactic through the final lines.
Spitfire Girls is set in 1959, when the experiences of the war were still vivid in people’s minds – and as such it’s a timely reminder that trauma doesn’t only affect those on the front line, and neither does it pass quickly.
Runs until 21 June 2025
