Sheffield Theatres Streaming until 28 March – book via https://www.sheffieldtheatres.co.uk/the-band-plays-on/tbpo-on-demand
5*****
Chris Bush has written an amazing play centering on Sheffield, its history both good and bad. The cast of 5 sing together with joyous harmonies, with monologues interspacing the songs that are bittersweet, funny and outstandingly moving.
Maimuna Memon begins proceedings with her version of I Bet That You Look Good on the Dancefloor from Sheffield band The Arctic Monkeys, leading straight into Anna Jane Casey playing Shelley telling her tale of building a nuclear shelter in 1984. I’m old enough to remember the film Threads, we watched it at school. Watching a nuclear bomb drop on Sheffield, when I was just down the road in Barnsley, was terrifying. And what could seem like a knee jerk reaction now, building a shelter was essentially sensible back then.
Sandra Marvin then belts out Pour Some Sugar on Me from another Sheffield band, Def Leppard. And this leads us into Jocasta Almgill’s vignette centering on politics and Brexit. Reminding us that the Sheffield Female Political Association was the first women’s suffrage organisation in the United Kingdom.
Followed on by the sublime vocals of Anna Jane Casey singing Don’t Let Him Waste Your Time by yet another son of Sheffield, Jarvis Cocker. You might be able to see the Sheffield connection by now. And although it is very Sheffield-centric, the point is not hammered home, instead it makes you feel at home.
Maimuna Memon is up again, this time she’s Jess. Who discovers sport, football in particular. Sheffield FC is the world’s oldest football club. But Jess begins to play for Sheffield Ladies, who began in 2003 and won the promotion to the Women’s Super League in 2014.
Jocasta Almgill leads the vocals in Sing It Back by Moloko leading into Sandra Marvin, who as Diane gave the most emotional monologue of the night. Starting off by discussing the 1864 Sheffield flood when Dale Dyke Dam burst its banks and killed 240 people. But this tragedy led into another. That day in April 1989 when 96 people were killed at Hillsborough. Marvin spoke Bush’s words with depth and meaning and no one who can remember that day in 1989 can fail to be touched by the raw emotion of the piece.
Jodie Prenger gives us Geoff Stephens The Crying Game, originally a hit for Sheffield lad Dave Berry. The vocals ring with the emotion left from the last monologue before hitting us with the final piece, recited by Prenger herself. After meeting at University, she and Tom move to Sheffield, the first ever City of Sanctuary. Living together for 13 years, Tom leaves her high and dry just as the first lock down begins in March 2020.
But here we find all the stories come together where all 5 of the women join together in a zoom choir. But not just a choir, a friendship, a help, a rock, a way of getting through – because after the last 12 months we all need a way of getting through. And we end with the stunning blended harmonies joining together for their choir singing Beginners by Slow Club.
This outstanding piece of theatre, written during the pandemic and made deliberately to be filmed demonstrates how we have all adapted for the new “normal”. Nothing can ever replace live theatre but stunningly written pieces like The Band Plays On lets us see what can be done in a crisis.
I wait eagerly for the day I can be back in a theatre and I wait more eagerly still for the day I can sit in the Crucible and see this sensational quintet perform the masterful production again.