Review: Sweat by Lynn Nottage, Citizens Theatre, Glasgow | A top quality production of a brilliant play
- Lisa in the theatre
- 2 days ago
- 4 min read
Updated: 2 hours ago
The Citizens Theatre, Glasgow and Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh's new production of Sweat by American playwright Lynn Nottage is playing in Scotland this May and June. Read my review of this superb new staging of this award-winning play below.
Lynn Nottage's Sweat ★★★★★
Review: 7 May 2026 | Citizens Theatre, Glasgow
Since the Citizens Theatre reopened after major redevelopment at the end of 2025, it has presented a varied programme of incredibly strong productions. Their new staging of Lynn Nottage's Pulitzer Prize-winning play Sweat may just be the best one yet. Directed by Joanna Bowman, Sweat from The Citz and co-producers Edinburgh Royal Lyceum, oozes quality from the minute the stage opens to reveal the sizzling floor of a massive industrial steelworks.
With jaw-dropping design from Francis O'Connor and ravishing lighting from Derek Anderson, the staging for Sweat is impeccably detailed and impressive. It would not be out of place in London's West End. From the blistering heat of the Olstead Steel Factory floor, to the heady interior of a dive bar where the steelworkers congregate to drink, debate and let off steam, the creative team have decisively brought 2000s blue-collar Pennsylvania to vibrant life in Glasgow.
Why should Scottish audiences see Sweat by Lynn Nottage? And why is an American play, set in Pennsylvania, on the bill at Glasgow's Citizens Theatre?
The complex characters of Sweat and their story are absolutely relevant to Scotland. To any town where generations of factory workers relied on heavy industry and massive corporate employers for their livelihoods, only to have the jobs pulled out from under their feet with the evolution of capitalism and de-industrialisation.
Lynn Nottage's Sweat is a meticulously researched, tragic yet powerful examination of how the lives in one impoverished town, and the dignity and decency of its people, are tied to this employment: to jobs that seem rock-solid. Early in the play, bar manager Stan (Christopher Middleton) asks his customers, "What would happen if Olstead (the major employer of the city) were to overnight ship their operations to Mexico?" and the workers laugh it off.
Just last week I saw Frances Poet's new play Stand and Deliver: The Lee jeans sit -in which looks at exactly this scenario at a clothing factory in Greenock, not far from Glasgow, during the 1980s. After generations of secure employment, the Lee Jeans workers were told that the factory would close and their jobs would be moved to Ireland.
The Lee Jeans workers in Greenock staged a "sit-in." They physically occupied their factory floor, locking their bosses out to prevent them from taking the machinery. I thought that was a bit far-fetched, to be honest. Corporations removing massive machines while their workers aren't looking? Surely not... But that's exactly what happens in Sweat, while the steelworkers are in their beds, machinery is removed from the mill and shipped off to Mexico and its cheaper operating and labour costs.
In the blink of an eye, jobs, livelihoods, and futures are obliterated.
The de-industrialisation of these towns that knew nothing else is catastrophic, and that's what Sweat so beautifully, but painfully depicts.
Lynn Nottage is known for her plays that showcase stories from working-class America. In Sweat, she turns her attention to the real-life industrial city of Reading, Pennsylvania, where in 2008 we meet Jason (Lewis MacDougall) and Chris (Rudolphe Mdlongwa), who are recently released from prison and obviously troubled. The play then skips back to 2001, to Stan's bar, where the majority of the action takes place, and where we meet the residents of Reading, who are mostly employed by Olstead's Steelworks.
Central to the story are a group of three friends, Travey (Lucianne McEvoy), Cynthia (Debbie Korley) and Jessie (Laura Cairns), who have all worked at the plant for years, but whose long-standing friendships are tested when Cynthia rises to a management position. Jason is Tracey's son, and Chris is Cynthia's son - both are also employed at Olsteads. But that's just how things work at these huge factories and in these towns; generations of workers introduce, and in fact expect, the next generation to follow in their footsteps. So when Colombian bartender Oscar (Manuel Pacific) shows an interest in working at the plant, he's soon labelled an outsider and put in his place by the locals.
With so many themes and catalysts for tragedy running through Nottage's work, the changing ethnic composition of the city is one that I found irresistible. Where Black and White communities had lived and worked alongside each other for years - not without tension, of course, and the use of shocking racial slurs within this play doesn't let us forget that - but it's fascinating how both groups are caught off guard when "their" jobs are offered to the American-Latinx community.
Over the next few hours, Sweat unravels its secrets just as the lives of the workers and the city fall apart.
The remarkable cast of nine are all outstanding. They deftly embody the challenging characters in the story, and lay bare the human side of the loss of industry, anger, poverty, drugs and racism. The steelworkers are as trapped in their town and by their circumstances as they are by the metal cage that encloses the Citizens Theatre's stage.
Although you may, with dread, see the writing on the wall (unlike the workers in the play), Sweat still manages to shock and surprise. Nottage's research is evident, her social insight devastating, and Joanna Bowman's handling of it all, magnificent.
Lynn Nottage won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2017 with Sweat, and in her intelligent, powerful and emotional staging of it, Joanna Bowman demonstrates exactly why that was deserved. In this new co-production between the Glasgow Citizens and Edinburgh Lyceum theatres, Bowman presents an extraordinary piece of theatre of the utmost quality for the people of Scotland. ★★★★★
Sweat is at Citizens Theatre, Glasgow, from 2 to 16 May before it heads to the Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh, from 27 May to 13 June.
Sweat cast: Citizens Theatre, Glasgow and Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh
Read the Sweat cast announcement here: https://www.lisainthetheatre.com/post/lynn-nottage-sweat-cast
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