Peake performance as Maxine writes the wrongs of history

BERYL, LOWRY Quays, ends tonight

FAVOURITE northern actress Maxine Peake apparently wrote this to get off her chest the injustice that allowed a multiple British and world champion to pass into history relatively unregarded.

The story of Beryl Burton is a truly remarkable one. Struck down by rheumatic fever as a child, she spent over a year in convalescence being nursed back to health and was basically told never to do anything strenuous again.

Rather than obey her over-cautious doctors she took up cycling after meeting her future husband, a keen cyclist, and never looked back.

Beryl’s punishing schedule saw her cycle hundreds of miles a week in all weathers, a driven athlete capable of beating the world — but also incapable, Peake suggests, of accepting second best or anything less than 100 per cent effort from those around her.

Her attitude brought her incredible highs: regional, national and world championships, and some bitter lows when events — or races — went ways other than as expected.

Peake’s play treads carefully through Beryl’s life, demanding both naturalistic and contrived reactions throughout. We see Beryl’s pain on actress Samantha Power’s tired face, but we also see all four actors talking to us and to each other as actors, not their characters. We see the cast — Matthew Ganley, Samantha, Rebecca Ryan and Lee Toomes — on their bikes, we see roads receding on the wall behind them, we see tables become lorries and hospital trollies and much more as Beryl’s body starts to take the strain.

Peake and tour director Rebecca Gatward engineer all the highs and lows of Beryl’s career, such as the thrill she got from meeting the Queen and of being feted by enthusiasts abroad.

But she also reveals a little of Beryl’s volatile, dark core. This is a woman who chastised her own daughter for beating her, not because the win was somehow wrong, but because the girl hadn’t put in hard work in the pack of chasing riders along the way.

If it is missing anything the play could perhaps have explored a little more of the social and political climate that allowed the poor Yorkshirewoman to be so lightly regarded at home.

But Beryl died as she had lived, defying the medical odds — and at last this play offers a wholeheartedly entertaining evening that helps to put her life into perspective.