Gwenda’s Garage – Review – Sheffield Playhouse

By Clare Jenkins, October 2025

An infamous 1979 Fiat car advert had as its slogan ‘If it were a woman, it would have its bottom pinched’. On one such hoarding, an angry feminist scrawled ‘If this lady was a car, she’d run you down’.

That advert gets an honorable mention in Nicky Hallett’s musical celebration of Gwenda’s Garage, the first female-only garage in England, set up in 1985 in the east end of Sheffield. It’s one of many references to an era of Women’s Lib demos, patriarchy vs sisterhood, Reclaim the Night T-shirts, Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique, Sojourner Truth’s Ain’t I A Woman? and the ground-breaking pro-gay parenthood book Jenny Lives With Eric and Martin.

It’s also there with such stirring lines as ‘We’re the second wave and we’re standing on the shoulders of giants… Welcome to Sheffield, the workshop of the world… the city of steel and revolution… of 5p bus fares and nuclear-free zones… the home of feminist uprising… the lesbian capital of the North.’

Created by Sheffield-based theatre group Out of the Archive – whose aim is to highlight little-known stories from the past – this joyous show, with Val Regan’s toe-tappingly catchy songs, captures the defiant mood of 1980s protest in the self-styled capital of the Socialist Republic of South Yorkshire. It’s set in a run-down garage, pink-lit, with a live band at the back and, centre-stage, a cardboard car gradually taking shape on a metal frame.

“Slickly sketched”

This is the workplace of four female mechanics: maternally-inclined Bev (Nancy Brabin-Platt), her activist lover Terry (Sia Kiwa), no-nonsense garage owner Carol (Eva Scott), and gauche, eager-to-learn apprentice Dipstick (the consistently winsome Lucy Mackay). Quickly setting the scene, they paint a picture of life in the Margaret Thatcher era: the Miners’ Strike, civil unrest, unemployment, food parcels and the Enterprise Allowance Scheme.

Firmly directed by Jelena Budimir, the play opens with the rousing song ‘Go with Gwenda’s’ (‘No need to panic, I’m a real mechanic’) before the quartet point out that they’re remembering this heady period at a distance of four decades. “We’ve become heritage,” says Carol.

Occasionally the characterisations teeter towards cliché, with Georgina Coram’s Feona (“with an e”) being a caricature of a poncy southerner in Laura Ashley dress and hair bow catapulted into a gritty northern setting and gradually becoming radicalised (“Don’t they have politics down south?” Carol asks her). But the women’s individual back stories are slickly sketched: Bev’s reference to a former partner being quick with his fists, Dipstick’s pretend family (she actually lives with her Mum and a series of ‘uncles’), Terry’s experiences of racism: ‘It’s so flaming white round here’…

Together, they’re out to make a go of Gwenda’s – and a life for themselves. Particularly Bev, who’s desperate to foster or adopt children, despite Terry’s refusal to become involved. It’s only by hiding her true self that she achieves her dream of fostering two children – only to lose them when Social Services discover she’s lesbian. This, after all, was also the time of Section 28, when the Tory Government introduced a clause into the Local Government Act banning the ‘promotion’ of homosexuality as a ‘pretended family relationship’.

“Unsettling parallels”

Showing the power of collective action, the other women weld together to abseil down the Town Hall and organise a Sheffield Lesbian Extravaganza. One cartoonish scene has a vicar (Liz Kitchen, who’s also the band’s drummer and associate musical director) angrily asking who’s scrawled ‘Jesus Loves John’ on the church door.

When Bev and Terry get back together through the song ‘Meet Me on the Bridge’, there’s more than a hint of Standing at the Sky’s Edge (the 2023 Crucible triumph) about it. In another touching scene, Carol sings ‘Holding it Together’, showing the vulnerable, tired human being underneath the strong exterior. Feona, meanwhile, ditches her husband and, in a very funny scene, attempts self-insemination underneath the car.

Bubbling below the surface are unsettling parallels with today: book banning, the trans debate, spray paint protests – and continuing messages about empowerment for today’s young women. So, despite the occasional simplistic lapse, it’s always admirable: warm, uplifting, exuberant. As one line cleverly puts it, you can’t beat a woman.

‘Gwenda’s Garage’ is at the Crucible Playhouse until 25th Oct, then at London’s Southwark Playhouse 30 Oct-29 Nov: sheffieldtheatres.co.uk
images: Chris Saunders 

Clare Jenkins( Writer )

Clare’s dream is to live in a hotel suite, safe from the bother of boiler breakdowns and crashing computers. Thanks to her husband Stephen McClarence’s work as a national newspaper travel writer, she’s been lucky enough to stay at hotels across the UK, India and many other countries – and has loved (nearly) every minute. As a journalist herself, she was a regular contributor to Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour for over 20 years and has made features and documentaries for Radios 3 and 4. She’s also a former theatre reviewer for The Stage magazine and, with her husband, co-author of Teatime at Peggy’s: A Glimpse of Anglo-India.

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