Steel | Park Theatre

It starts with a kiss. But not just any kiss, a Salterbeck kiss, or for those not well-versed in West Cumbrian slang, a headbutt.

This juxtaposition of violence and tenderness runs through the heart of Lee Mattinson’s Steel, a love letter to a working-class community which has forgotten how to love itself and to two teenage boys whose wild, wild hearts are struggling to find a place there.

Steel opens with these two boys, seventeen year-old James (Jordan Tweddle) and his best friend Kamran (Suraj Shah), cleaning up blood from the aforementioned Salterbeck kiss in a Burger King toilet. Then James gets a call from ‘some snooty lads’, letting him know that he is heir to a mile of the British railway network, a mile which will come with a million-pound payout if he can find the original contract within the next twelve hours. 

The rest of the play is very much split into two halves - a thrilling hunt for the missing contract, much of which ends up taking the form of of an unexpected pub crawl with James’s deadbeat father in pursuit, and a much quieter, more introspective section exploring the boys’ feelings for one another and James’s long-buried family secrets. 

The action hurtles around the West Cumbrian town of Workington, and often backwards and forwards in time too, with brilliant movement direction from Kieran Sheehan, lighting from Jessie Addinall and sound design from Mark Melville setting the scene in the absence of set itself. The stage, set in traverse, is bookmarked by a bench at one end and a small elevated platform at the other with a microphone and a backdrop which periodically flashes up the time to remind us of the high stakes of the mission. The floor is decorated with a black and white illustration of Workington along the railway tracks by Emily Ford, the only real nod to set dressing in the piece.

Shah flits between his main character Kamran and a large cast of side-characters with ease and dexterity, sometimes even making the shift mid-line. The way in which the play is structured, as a story being told by the two leads, means this form of storytelling works, although it is testament to Shah’s abilities that each new character feels real, believable and unique.

The play does pack a lot into 85 minutes though, and these rapid-fire shifts in time, place and character, with dialect-packed dialogue delivered at speed, can sometimes become confusing. Given a little more space to breathe, and perhaps a few more visual pointers, Steel’s complex narrative could resonate even better with its viewers.

What certainly does resonate though is the climax of the play, exploring queerness in a northern, working class environment. Tweddle excels in these scenes, and watching James grapple with his own identity and that of his town is a moving experience which is sure to linger with audiences.

Steel runs at Park Theatre until 14th June.

Tickets and More Information

★★★☆☆ (3*)

Gifted tickets in return for an honest review | Photography by Chris Payne