Theatre reviews: Sweat | Funeral For My Boobs

Sweat, Citizens’ Theatre, Glasgow ★★★★★

Funeral For My Boobs, Oran Mor, Glasgow ★★★

With perfect timing, Joanna Bowman’s mighty production of Lynn Nottage’s Pulitzer-winning 2015 play Sweat opens at the Citizens’ Theatre at the very moment when the UK is facing the reality of a profoundly changed and fragmented political landscape.

Set in 2000 and 2008, in the Rust Belt former steel town of Reading, Pennsylvania, the play charts the breakdown of working-class prosperity and solidarity in a community deeply damaged by the market-driven economics of the last 45 years, where growing economic despair triggers a gradual turn towards MAGA-style ugliness and racism.

Nottage has been compared to American greats such as Arthur Miller, in the scope and intensity of her drama; as over two and a half hours, she charts the fragmenting friendship of three women who have worked together for decades on the steelworks floor.

Tracey is white, a tough but glamorous widow given to flirting with Stan, the manager of their favourite bar. Her black best friend Cynthia is tempted by a recently advertised management job; their pal Jessie drinks too much, but always turns up for her shift.

READ MORE: Sweat: US Rust Belt play has 'uncanny' echoes of 21st century Glasgow

The atmosphere rapidly sours, though, when Cynthia wins promotion, just as it emerges that management are bent on closing the plant, or forcing the once unionised government workforce to accept much poorer pay and conditions.

A long and bitter strike ensues; and the drama revolves around a fateful evening in the bar when Tracey’s son Jason, also a plant worker, takes violent revenge on a young Hispanic barman who has joined the scab workforce at the factory.

Despite the tragic arc of the story, there’s more anger than depression in Nottage’s blazingly vivid play, which brings the Reading community to life in tremendous, beautifully observed detail, and sees all the wisdom, skill and energy stored in that community, as well as the sheer weight of the pressures on it.

Co-produced by the Citizens and the Lyceum in Edinburgh, Bowman’s production boasts a thrilling design by Frances O’Connor, full of great bars of neon colour that evoke both the fierce heat of the factory floor and the intensity of the economic and psychological pressures in play.

And the production’s superb acting company, led by Lucianne McEvoy as Tracey and Debbie Korley as Cynthia, revels in Nottage’s powerful text, delivering a range of rich, deeply-shaped characters to remember; each with a story that reflects a profound truth about the risks we run when we forget human decency, and begin to treat human beings and their communities as an unnecessary cost in a system where nothing is valued, except the financial bottom line.

Hannah Howie’s Funeral For My Boobs at A Play, A Pie and A Pint is almost the precise opposite of Sweat in form; a 65-minute cabaret that takes a serious subject and turns it into a small-scale showbiz spectacular, full of wild campery, and gothic riffs on familiar funeral rituals.

Howie’s aim is to tell the story of her own discovery that the early deaths of many women in her family were caused by the inherited Braca-2 gene, which carries an 85 per cent lifetime risk of developing breast cancer.

Hannah decides on a preventative mastectomy, waving goodbye to her much-loved boobs Georgia and Frieda, played here in outrageous style by Kirsty Malone and Gregor John-Owen; and the three lead us through a lush torch-song playlist, ranging from Bizet’s Carmen to Celine Dion, with Howie’s own magnificent voice to the fore.

For myself, I found some of the show’s jokery a little forced. Yet its sheer courage and boldness clearly struck a chord with a delighted audience; and its final tribute to Howie’s late grandmother Agnes is irresistibly moving, full of gratitude both for those who went before, and for the modern medical science that saves so many lives, every day.

Sweat is at the Citizens’ Theatre, Glasgow, until 16 May, and the Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh, from 27 May until 6 June. Funeral For My Boobs is at Oran Mor, Glasgow until 9 May; Gaiety Theatre, Ayr, 14-16 May; and Assembly Roxy, Edinburgh, 20-24 May.

The Scotsman’s arts newsletter is now sent twice a week - subscribe today

Want the latest Scottish headlines sent directly to your phone? Sign up to our new WhatsApp channel here