Barbara Buttrick was a Hull pioneer: a female boxing champion back in the 1950s, when nice girls didn’t fight. She was 4ft 11in of power and gumption, refusing to bow to the pressure from the male-dominated media and medical profession to take off her gloves. She’s now 86.
Sixty years on from her heyday, women’s boxing is an Olympic sport and in the run-down Six Bells, a pub and community hub in Hull, former champion boxer Taylor Flint (Caitlin Drabble) is still licking her wounds after narrowly failing to make it to the London games in 2012. Since then her life has crashed, but the Six Bells’ landlady Nora (Judi Earl) has taken her in and is proposing a boxercise class. The taciturn Taylor isn’t impressed.
A younger version of Buttrick (Kat Rose-Martin) appears throughout Amanda Whittington’s immensely likable play, her fighting spirit urging on a group of women negotiating the challenges and crises of life in austerity Britain. They discover themselves and solidarity as they come together to take part in a fight night to help rescue the pub, which is threatened with closure. In a neat touch, it turns out that the unseen brewery representative is called Theresa May.
Whittington’s play recalls Nell Dunn’s 1981 drama Steaming in the way it brings together female characters who find empowerment through a common cause. There are some very nice moments, the best writing coming in an extended and heartbreaking scene between mother-of-four Lauren (Danielle Henry), who is looking for love, and her neighbour Jazz (Olivia Sweeney) who has plenty on offer.
There are neat vignettes from Maya Barcot, as a Polish immigrant who came to the UK to find a better life and isn’t sure she did, and Anna Doolan, who is very funny as Grace, the teenager banned from the pub before she is old enough to be in it.
But it all feels very familiar without being truly distinctive. The first half doesn’t allow for enough character development and the second half feels rushed, as backstories emerge. Mark Babych’s production needs more cut and thrust, and the physical sequences cry out for bolder choreography. Nonetheless you can’t help but cheer on these women as this flawed show about flawed people delivers plenty of heart if not a knockout punch.
- At the Hull Truck theatre until 1 July. Box office: 01482 323638
