REVIEW: Managed Approach, Open Aire Theatre, EdFringe 2025 ★★★★

Bad men, who do bad things, are everywhere. So do we want to protect women, or empower them? Is there a reality in which we can do both? This is the question offered through a stark blend of poignant fiction and verbatim interviews in Managed Approach, a thoroughly captivating play that vibrantly captures 2014 Leeds and the limited success of the legalisation of sex work for a brief time in Holbeck. Using sex workers’ own words alongside a story of a teenage daughter and her protective mother, this show informs and entertains in wonderful balance, providing a rarely-considered lens on women’s safety.

Above all, the play was engaging in its skilful revelation of a perhaps overlooked corner of Yorkshire history. It is genuinely informative, dealing both with the Yorkshire Ripper murders of the 1970s and their cultural aftermath in the area, as well as the legalisation of sex work in the same region forty years later. The verbatim interviews lend an uncomfortable intimacy to the storytelling, under literal red lights and performed live into a microphone, as if the audience is accidentally privy to the original recording of the narratives. Meanwhile, and in parallel, wannabe wildchild college student Abbie rages against her mother’s protection, plunging into drinking and party culture and experiencing first-hand the continued extreme danger to women out in the world.

Open Aire Theatre’s production acknowledges that an audience may not be well-versed in this particular era of British history. Context is provided through minimalist projected subtitles which set the scene. Throughout, we visit and revisit four sex workers – Dani, Ellen (both H Sneyd), Sarah and Tara (both Tel Chiuri) as they express, colloquially, reflections on their experiences of sex work. What makes these sections so very impactful is twofold. Firstly, the un-tampered nature of their words: verbatim was an excellent choice because the entirely nuanced and real experiences are preserved. These are not theatrically hammy, grief-stricken women, laiden with anguish – they are simply women speaking about their work, its regulations and their experiences within an industry that is not always safe. Secondly, the performances are thoughtful and achieve great impact; both Sneyd and Chiuri are affecting.

Eanna Ferguson and Jules Coyle are wonderfully believable as mother Kate and daughter Abbie, and although Kate is at times written a little tritely (think ‘mum-in-cardigan-in-any-British-TV-show-ever’), she garners sympathy through her pained desire to protect her daughter from the dangers of the world at all costs. Coyle’s Abbie is simply joyful, and holds up a much-needed comedic backbone as a vivacious teen seeking independence. It is by contrast to these moments of comedy – especially as 12-year-old Abbie in an endearing school-run-singalong scene – that her experience of one terrifying night out is so gripping. We see her youth and effervescence drained as she uncovers truths about the world around her, trying to meld together what she knows of her hometown, her mother’s own past, and the women making a living in Holbeck.

Thankfully, there is gravitas and skill in every performance, with the audience evidently in safe hands – aside from one or two questionable Yorkshire accents occasionally slipping towards Anne Hathaway’s One Day blunder. Set design sees us in Abbie’s bedroom throughout, meaning that we hear sex workers’ lives told in a dimmed, red-tinged version of this hallowed childhood space. This is touching and unnerving and allows, toward the end, the audience to see Abbie and her mother listen to and react to the sex workers’ narratives. This framing is a lovely way of tying together the two separate worlds we’ve seen, as mother and daughter are given an opportunity to hear the words of the women they have respectively judged and begun to understand.

By the end, there is a tragic sense that, as ever, nothing has really changed in Holbeck or beyond: legalisation came in, did as much harm as good in some cases, and was scrapped in the face of local residents’ complaints. Acute fear for women’s safety still grips families in Yorkshire and far beyond, and the violent crimes committed last century are replicated over and over. This is the tragedy, really, of the ‘managed approach’ episode – not that it failed, exactly, but that it was still so far from comprehensively understanding and catering to women’s safety, experiences of sex work, and the lives of the working class population in the area.

This is a well-researched and valuable piece of theatre around women’s rights, their bodies, and their safety – and in the end, we are left both with a renewed sense of grief for girls and women who grow up at risk of violence or death, and a yearning for strategic, well-planned legal change that works for women in reality as well as on paper.

Recommended Drink: Anything that comes with a Drink Cover; we wish it weren’t so.

Catch Managed Approach between between 8th and 24th August at 1.40pm at Coorie at Gilded Balloon Patter House. Tickets are available through the EdFringe Online Box Office.