Stand & Deliver: The Lee Jeans Sit-In theatre review – Threads of defiance
Frances Poet’s stirring account of the event captures a landmark moment of Scottish industrial action with warmth, humour and defiant community spirit
When the Tron Theatre standing ovation starts, it feels like Glaswegian culture is having another moment. There have been a few recently, from the premiere of Poor Things, based on Alasdair Gray’s 1992 novel, to the release of Everybody To Kenmure Street, a documentary which celebrated the community protests that thwarted immigration enforcement in Pollokshields. For all its well-documented problems, this is a city that shows up for itself and tells its own stories in autonomous and uplifting ways. Yes, this one happened in Greenock (where the tour fittingly closes), but the complex socio-economic history of that town is inextricably entwined with that of its larger neighbour.
The Lee Jeans protest is one of the more feted episodes in the recent history of industrial action in Scotland. And writer Frances Poet’s retelling of how 140 garment workers staged a seven-month sit-in that saved their jobs and exposed the management lies which forced them into redundancy has wit, verve and a nice balance of documentary realism and experimental energy. The key characters, like Jo Freer’s Helen Monaghan, an unassuming shop steward with a will of iron, and the Wallace sisters (sensible Cathie and wayward Maggie, brought to life by Hannah Jarrett-Scott and Chiara Sparkes) play earlier versions of themselves. It’s not so much breaking the fourth wall, Brechtian style, as carving a little enclave in it. The characters look back from 2026 on how and why they did what they did, squabbling over details from time to time.
There’s an undertow of sadness to the story which forms a nice contrast with the peppy working men’s club-style band, made up of the cast itself, that soundtracks the whole thing. They play nostalgic tunes, such as Kim Wilde’s ‘Kids In America’, which are subtly redolent of the encroaching, US-dominated capitalist dystopia we now live in.
Stand & Deliver: The Lee Jeans Sit-In, Eden Court, Inverness, Tuesday 2 & Wednesday 3 June; Cumbernauld Theatre, Friday 5 & Saturday 6 June; Beacon Arts Centre, Greenock, Tuesday 9 & Wednesday 10 June; reviewed at Tron Theatre, Glasgow; picture: Mihaela Bodlovic.