When Matt Miller asked the audience to close our eyes and picture a positive memory in a vehicle, I was immediately transported back to my father’s rust-orange VW van. It was the 1980s, three kids rolling around in the back with no seatbelts—a manoeuvre we used to call “popcorning”—as my father took perilous corners at speed. I could hear the engine struggle as it whined uphill and smell that particular mix of camping gear and old upholstery. It’s funny how visceral those car memories can be, and how quickly they pull you back to a very specific relationship with a parent. I suspect that’s exactly what Miller was trading on with Fixing, a one-man show about car maintenance, and the messy, complicated love between fathers and children.

Written and performed by Matt Miller and directed by Peader Kirk, Fixing is the third collaboration between the pair and their first venture into drag. The show premiered in 2024 at Newcastle’s Alphabetti Theatre and has recently been touring. Miller plays two characters: themself as a child and their drag alter ego, Natalie Spanner, who arrives to lead us through an eight-week course in holistic car care. Through Natalie’s garage lessons (complete with innuendo and audience participation involving ratchets and jumper leads), we move between a modern workshop and time-bleached memory. The story centres on Miller’s father and his black Sunbeam Talbot, a car the family called Black Beauty. We are given a vision of this beloved “classic,” complete with a hole in the floor and no indicators, just old trafficator flaps that opened on either side. This becomes the vehicle, literally and metaphorically, for examining the period when Miller’s parents divorced and their father was living in a transitional home with a bathtub ripped from its fittings and a kitchen floor replaced by a gangplank.

In a strange way, the show almost seemed to be written to be staged in the small box-style theatre at Theatre Royal Wakefield. A black leather sofa sat off to one side, standing in for the back seat of the father’s car, whilst red metal shelves held engine parts, tools, and repair items in that lived-in, higgledy-piggledy way garages actually look. The industrial bones of the venue became part of the world with red brick walls and handy steel girders (also used for lighting) lending a sense of authenticity to the space.

Miller walks on set as Natalie, wearing a black boiler suit with silver sequin details spelling out “Natalie” on the front with crossed spanners on the back. A wig and skyscraper-platform heels added a good five to seven inches of height. When Miller shifts into young Matt, the wig and heels come off, and an oversized Mars Attacks jumper covers the boiler suit. The choice of jumper felt oddly well observed, a nod to a specific personal memory rather than generically coded for a time period. The physical and vocal transformations between the two modes were impressive, moving from Natalie’s camp energy to an unforced child’s voice (and occasionally to the father’s booming voice) with just a few subtle changes.

To see my full Review, please visit Northern Arts Review

See you in the shadows my loves,

Sean x