Fixing review – delightful off-road adventure about family mechanics

Alphabetti, Newcastle
Written and performed by Matt Miller, this tender solo show weaves in bittersweet childhood memories with car maintenance metaphors

We have signed up for a 12-week course in vehicle maintenance. Our workshop leader is Natalie Spanner, her blue overalls and pink heels setting her somewhere between The Repair Shop and pantomime dame. All those pistons, crankshafts and dipsticks keep the innuendoes flowing, but in this delightful solo show, written and performed by Matt Miller, something more sober is lurking.

The course, Natalie explains, is about “holistic car care”. In part she is sending up the cliches of self-help therapies – we are, inevitably, on a journey – but in part, she is in earnest.