Cambridge Arts Theatre, Cambridge – until Saturday 11th April 2026
Reviewed by Steph Lott
5*****
Fly anything to anywhere. That was the objective of the Air Transport Auxiliary (ATA) a civilian organisation founded to fly warplanes between factories, maintenance units and the front line.
I had no idea what the ATA was before last night. By the time the lights came up at the Cambridge Arts Theatre, I felt deeply grateful to have my ignorance corrected in such a moving, beautifully crafted way.
Spitfire Girls, a Tilted Wig production, written by Katherine Senior, tells the story of the ATA’s remarkable female pilots — women who flew Spitfires, Hurricanes and a bewildering variety of other aircraft during the Second World War, navigating under the clouds without instruments, and without radio. It is a slice of history that has been shamefully overlooked, and this production does it proud.
Senior herself plays Bett, and it is a performance of quiet, steely conviction. But for me, the evening belonged to Hannah Morrison as Dotty. She lit up the stage — all infectious energy and warmth — and made the relationship between the two sisters feel utterly real. The sibling dynamic at the heart of this play is its greatest strength: the love, the rivalry. It’s about two women navigating not just the skies but a world that kept trying to put them back in the kitchen. Morrison and Senior struck sparks off each other in the best possible way, and it gave a story already rich in historical interest a genuine emotional core.
The supporting cast filled out the world around them with colour and confidence. There was not a weak link on stage, and every character felt like a real person with a life beyond the script. Credit too to Stephen Moynihan, whose movement direction and choreography were quietly extraordinary. The physical language of the production — the way the cast used their bodies to suggest flight, effort, and freedom — added a dimension that words alone could not have achieved.
What struck me most was how the play holds two worlds in balance. On one side, the cramped domesticity of 1940s womanhood. On the other, the vast, exhilarating freedom of being thousands of feet up in a Spitfire. The contrast is never laboured, but it is always there, and it makes the achievements of these women feel all the more extraordinary.
This is theatre that entertains and educates in equal measure — a tribute to a forgotten generation. Do not miss it.