WHO were the first women in the country to be paid equal wages for doing the same job as men? ATTAgirl if you know – because it was the female members of the Air Transport Auxiliary, a civilian organisation formed to ferry warplanes between factories, maintenance units and frontline squadrons.
The largely unknown history of the ATA, which, during the Second World War employed 1,250 men and women from 25 countries, immediately fascinated actor Katherine Senior as she embarked on her own adventure of producing three sons. Alongside the joys of parenthood, she has spent the past ten years researching the contribution made by the women of the ATA and the challenges they faced. The result is the play Spitfire Girls, on stage in Salisbury this week as part of a UK tour, and next year headed to London and for five weeks at New York’s annual Brits Off Broadway festival.
The play came together in 2024, when Tilted Wig was invited to join the National Theatre’s Generate programme for a week of intensive development. Katherine wanted to give human faces to a story that had been skimmed over in documentaries. She hit on the idea of two sisters who decided to “join up” on the same day, leaving their widowed farmer father to cope on his very truculent and dictatorial ownsome. One of the biggest challenges was to bring the thrill of flight to a blasé 21st century audience in a convincing way. Director Sean Aydon and his five-strong cast viscerally capture that thrust of excitement as the daily-invoked Blue Skies open up to Bett and Dotty.
Spitfire Girls is a love story, but not a romance. It’s about love of family, of colleagues, of country and of nostalgia. You think you know what’s happening, but then you don’t, and the play retains its poignant edge until the final moment.
The playwright takes the central role of Bett throughout the Salisbury week – at other venues it is shared with Katriona Brown. Hannah Morrison is younger sister Dotty, with Paul Brown, Kirsty Cox (known locally for her work with New Old Friends and at Lyme Regis rep) and Jack Hulland, who has been with Katherine through Creative Cow and since the inception of Tilted Wig 19 years ago, together playing six characters. The play begins as the year turns from 1959 to 1960, and the two years between 1943 and 1945.
It is rich with information, filled with humanity, heart-achingly sad, very funny and threaded with the sense of duty, compassion and hope. One man in the Salisbury audience confided in his wife: “You know, I have never told you this, but I used to go out with a Spitfire Girl.” The local ones were stationed at Hamble Ferry Pool (as their bases were known). They were derided, patronised and teased, but their determination, skills and patriotism were finally recognised.
Spitfire Girls is a great show, well worth the visit, and recommending to your friends on both sides of the Atlantic. Thanks to Tilted Wig for the cleverly designed, informative and very readable programme, too.
GP-W