Fixing – Alphabetti Theatre
Newcastle Upon Tyne – 27th February 2026
Invited| Review By Stephen Stokoe
It is the early part of the year and the time when people’s minds start to think about taking up a new hobby, considering their past deeds or perhaps bettering themselves. They can look no further than Natalie Spanner’s course on remedial motor mechanics and maintenance. Over a period of 8 weeks, the effervescent Ms Spanner will take you through basic maintenance and upkeep, part identification, and getting an intimate knowledge of your car.
This is how Fixing by Matt Miller opens but as we take our journey with the cheerful and welcoming Natalie in tandem with a stroll through the childhood memories of playwright Matt, we soon realise that the self help group ostensibly about car maintenance and mechanics, is a metaphor for something else entirely.
Running alongside the vehicle maintenance course is a story and memory around Matt’s dad’s midlife crisis – the purchase and subsequent tinkering of a classic car dubbed ‘Black Beauty.’
Co-written by director Peader Kirk, I first saw Fixing in November 2024 and it has lost none of its charm in the second viewing. There is something delightful about the whole set up of the piece. During the mechanics course segments the audience are invited into the performance area in light hearted, whimsical and occasionally double-entendre filled vignettes exploring how an engine fires, conducting an oil check, and organising your tools – not necessarily in that order.
While Natalie’s course progresses we are also taken on an intimate exploration of a traumatic event in Matt and his younger sister Ruby’s life following their parent’s somewhat acrimonious divorce. There is something very real about the way the writers’ deliver this element of the story. In the main it is told as a linear event but as sometimes happens and as Matt points out ‘memories glitch’ where parts are missing, perhaps embellished, ‘rose tinted’ or misremembered altogether.
The set is very well thought out – part community centre course room – part homely garage but it is the lighting and soundscape that really draws the audience in. A lot of care and thought has been invested in how Fixing is received and credit must go to the technical and creative team for their input.
Fixing offers an insight into the fragile relationship between a no nonsense, slightly flaky but creative and I would like to say fun and childlike dad and his children, particularly the queer emerging Matt. In the play, Matt does not fall into the trap of highlighting the differences between himself and his Northern dad but explores their similarities with a particularly effective device of sounding an old fashioned car horn whenever their two personalities converge.
There is also the gorgeous relationship between Matt and his younger sister Ruby which acts as a mirror to the bond, close and distant, of Matt and his father. For the purposes of this review I have used the pronouns of the presenting characters rather than those the dramatists may use in real life.
I have mentioned that this is my second viewing of Fixing, having seen it at Alphabetti in its earlier form and it has hit me ‘where I live’ on both occasions. As a gay man of a certain age, I could relate to the difficulties Matt recalls between himself and a distant, seemingly alien father but this play is not just about one queer boy and his dad and many people will be able to take something away from how Matt explores the trauma of his parent’s divorce and his attitudes towards it, equally how Natalie deals with her own traumatic life event in a self help seminar on which the story arc relies.
Once again, I had the pleasure of chatting to Matt after the show, to discuss the development and how I had received the second viewing of the piece. I recalled that my mind had travelled to darker places on the first viewing than, perhaps was intended. This newer production, while no less effective, offered a more comfortable conclusion than the earlier incarnation.
Fixing at Alphabetti Theatre is part of a UK tour taking in various dates and venues across the country. It could be described, quite erroneously in many regards, as a one-person play but it is so much more than that. It is fun, it is unashamedly queer, but it is in its humanity that Fixing continues to be one of my favourite contemporary plays of recent times.