Showing @ Festival Theatre, Edinburgh until Sat 30 Mar

In times of recession and redundancy, one way to secure work is to create your own; find the gap in the market and fill it. Entrepreneurship: the foundation of a working capitalist society. But there’s a difference between profiteering and trying to pay the bills. Now, in a play version, Simon Beaufoy’s unemployed steelworkers from Sheffield go the whole way to secure a few grand that will go a whole lot further. Daniel Evans’ production is a funny, and entertaining look at post-Thatcherite Sheffield and the bold and somewhat creative endeavours of the working class.

The year Beaufoy’s BAFTA award winning film was released, Tony Blair was elected Prime Minister and New Labour was the shining light at the end of the Thatcherite tunnel – or so we thought. Although filled with frivolity, innuendo and teasers, the politics at the heart of the story are never far from the surface. In a hollowed out steelworks, Hot Chocolate, Donna Summer and Tom Jones fill rehearsals as the boys battle with physical and mental barriers, inhibitions and nerves. It’s a play that continues to get better as the climax gets closer. The men don’t just overcome financial pressure: the release of inhibition, the camaraderie and the amends they make with themselves and others is liberating – for the characters as much as the audience. The light at the end of the tunnel isn’t a new political direction, it’s the underdogs.

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