★★★★★ The Ladies Football Club: Theatre With The Drama And Joy of a 90th Minute Winner

Photography by Johan Persson

Do you know what the first piece ever published at Sheffield Magazine was? For all the theatre and gig reviews we've had, the news pieces we've been a part of, the new openings and the devastating closures, the first piece to live on our site in 2022 was coverage of Sweden vs Netherlands as the Women's Euros came to Sheffield.

Women's football has been centre stage for a while now, in 2025 the Women's Euros final was almost the headline act of a sunny Tramlines weekend as the Lionesses retained their trophy. Now, in 2026 a groundbreaking adaptation by Tim Frith of Stefano Massini's original play aims to push the sport even further into the limelight.

The Ladies Football Club tells the story of a group of female factory workers at Doyle & Walker Munitions, who form a football team after a kickabout on their lunch break. The team is formed initially to express their love of the game (and one particular fictional player for Sheffield Wednesday) but this quickly becomes a vessel for motherhood, distraction, camaraderie and protest. It's the story of women entering a male dominated space, succeeding and subsequently being silenced.

The entire performance is a true joy to watch, it's full of humour and comedy to contrast the looming sense of dread pervading the wartime setting. The movement and choreography is captivating, making the small stage feel like a full sized pitch at times, with the moves themselves become more fluid as the team take on bigger and bigger challenges.

There are your usual stereotypes among the 11 characters: the shy and quiet type who finds her voice and goes on to lead the team, the gentle giant who the characters find intimidating until she opens up, the outspoken socialist who refers to most negative things as the "apotheosis of capitalism". Despite these well trodden tropes, the characters are never grating, such is the charm and emotion in those performances. Particular highlights for us were the brash Essex-ness of Anne Odeke as Justine and Cara Theobold as Violet, the show's heart and narrator.

It's hard to believe these characters weren't real people. The Doyle & Walker Munitions team is clearly based on the very real and very legendary Dick, Kerr Ladies Football Club. It's even harder to believe that they would be banned from playing football after the war as the FA deemed it "quite unsuitable for females". It's even harder than that to believe that this ban wasn't lifted until 1970. Despite the 100 years that have passed since the ban was implemented, and the meteoric rise of women's football this century, this piece of theatre feels as relevant as ever.

Sheffield is the home of football, the Crucible itself stands on the site where the Sheffield Rules of the game were agreed in 1858. In 2026, football in the city is at a crossroads with the financial difficulty that Sheffield Wednesday find themselves in. It's been a long-standing fear amongst fans of the beautiful game that those in charge see it as a cash-cow, a plaything of the super rich, rather than the grassroots community that it has been from the start. This is a fear that the story taps into relentlessly but one that the characters consistently overcome, whether it be their boss trying to embarrass them, to their boss eventually using them for their own gains, to them defying the FA and continuing to champion the game in all of their own ways.

The cross-section between sport and theatre is ever shrinking with directors and writers seeing the stories and drama that can be produced week in and week out. With this production though, Sheffield Theatres have surely soared to the top of table.

The Ladies Football Club is on at the Crucible until 28th March 2026 and tickets are still available via the Sheffield Theatres website here.