Stand and Deliver: The Lee Jeans Sit-in at Glasgow’s Tron Theatre and on tour – review

Stand and Deliver tells the story of one of the most famous industrial disputes of recent Scottish history. The Lee Jeans sit-in of 1981 took place when a group of 140 workers at Lee’s Greenock site barricaded themselves inside the factory to prevent the American owners from transporting the machinery to their proposed new location in Northern Ireland. For seven months, they went on strike and protested to keep their jobs, drawing in celebrity support from across left-wing politics and wider public life.

However, if this makes this new show – a co-production between the National Theatre of Scotland and Glasgow’s Tron Theatre – sound like didactic narrative or political agitprop, then it’s anything but. Instead, Frances Poet’s new play is vibrant, rich and full of life. That’s because the script rightly focuses on the human stories of the individual characters, led by Helen, the shop steward who organised the action. Played with note-perfect precision by Jo Freer, she’s the central force of the play, albeit often reluctantly. In fact, the first minute of the play consists of Freer silently preparing herself to tell the story with immaculately expressed body language and studied reluctance, reminding us that this warrior of the factory floor had fame thrust upon her by circumstances.

Poet constructs the play through a double narrative, telling the story both of 1981 and of 2026 as the women of today reflect on what happened. There’s some slightly clumsy fourth-wall-breaking, but it reminds you that these people had everyday stresses to contend with alongside their working-class heroism, and the script makes their dialogue so immediate that all six of the actors, playing several parts, have you rooting for them right from the off. At times, in fact, the audience feels like the seventh character, and there were several turning points in the story where the Tron crowd cheered and whooped like they were as invested in the story as the strikers.

The drama and the tension are balanced alongside dialogue that’s often uproariously funny, and the actors nail the west coast accents perfectly. Together with Helen, Chiara Sparkes’ Maggie takes centre stage with her explosive youthful energy and argumentative vigour, while Aron Dochard plays the men in the story with remarkable versatility. However, this is an ensemble achievement, compounded by the way the actors play and sing the music for a series of early 80s bangers that add colour, energy and occasional poignancy to the atmosphere.

Only towards the end does it slightly lose its way. The names of all 140 strikers are put on a retro overhead projector in a nice gesture of recognition. However, the audience breaks into applause in a way that shows they clearly thought the show was over and, in fairness, it could have been. The ensuing ten minutes feel like padding that could have been trimmed. Otherwise, this is not only a powerful tale but also a hugely entertaining evening. Moreover, it’s exactly the sort of story that a company like the National Theatre of Scotland exists to tell.