Biting Point | Fruit Market Car Park

Content warning for show and review: mentions of racism, grief, class.

Middle Child’s Biting Point, written by Sid Sagar and directed by Paul Smith, follows John, a supermarket driver and Anita, a property manager, spending their day working and stuck in traffic around Hull, before their stories intertwine.

The first thing which must be discussed is the venue. The show was performed at the top of a multi-storey car park, which worked amazingly well for this production. With the show so rooted in Hull, with specific villages and even A-roads mentioned, having this production surrounded by local landmarks (Hull Minister, The Deep, the Humber, just to name a few) felt like the perfect place. It definitely helped that the sunshine was out. However, the change in weather will change the atmosphere of the show, and it would be interesting to see the show when the weather is overcast.

Headphones were provided for every member of the audience, which provided amazing sound quality for all attendees, and kept our ears warm in the wind! This is a great accessibility feature which would work well in so many other shows too. The use of these headsets also made the show feel incredibly intimate, despite being in the round and outside.

The story (Sagar) was really interesting. The characters are so real; I felt as if I knew these people. Their days were spent working very normal jobs and grappling with issues which people have to deal with on an everyday basis – issues around class, racism (including internalised racism), and grief. They do this by making them very “everyday” – dealing with eczema, getting annoyed at parents for saying things “incorrectly,” avoiding visiting parents in a hospice, or getting frustrated when bosses don’t understand the reality of your working day. Yet it shows the reality of what people do when trying to deal with these complex issues and the pressure that can build up inside.

The final section of the show is when the two characters come together. This is one of the most poignant parts of the show as it highlights the way that people from different communities can sometimes interact and how people under pressure can be turned into the

people they never anticipated they would be. John uses a racist slur when Anita suggests that he was at fault in the accident, but explains he is under immense pressure from work and that he used to work with refugees. Anita rightly challenges him on this and explains what it is like to deal with racism on an everyday basis. The show ends on a cliffhanger, which asks the audience to think about what they’ve seen and this final interaction between John and Anita.

The cast, too, should be commended. There are just two cast members on stage, Katie Singh as Anita and Marc Graham as John. Their characters were so real and brought vividly to life by them – this is part of the beauty of the show. They had to not only just perform the show but also interact with the audience and recorded speech, which was fed through on the

headphones in lieu of other cast members.

Ultimately, the show was thought-provoking and encouraged the audience to question the characters, the circumstances, and the wider climate in the UK at the moment. It’s a very authentic piece of theatre which just shows how pressures that everyday people deal with can boil over and change who they once were.

★★★★★ (5*)

Gifted tickets in return for an honest review | Photography by Tom Arran