EDFRINGE REVIEW: Managed Approach (Open Aire Theatre)

Managed Approach - ★★★☆☆ – Complex

Open Aire Theatre
8-24 Aug
Review by Rebecca Mahar
 
Managed Approach from Open Aire Theatre is a raw look at the implementation of the UK’s first, short lived, legalised red light district. 
 
Written by Jules Coyle and directed by Lily Ellis, Managed Approach tackles multiple perspectives on the “managed approach” to street sex work in the Holbeck area of Leeds, implemented in 2014. According to Safer Leeds Partnership, this was “categorically not a legal red light zone,” but public opinion clearly differs. The MA, in theory, was designed to increase safety and support for sex workers, while also reducing problems caused by street sex work to local residents and businesses. As Managed Approach demonstrates, it wasn’t that simple.

Managed Approach promotional image.

The show opens with projected white text on a red background describing the MA, then flicks to a name: Dani. This is the name of one of the sex workers interviewed during the writing of Managed Approach, several of whose stories are interspersed throughout the play. An actor (H Sneyd) emerges from the audience to sit at a microphone and begins to speak Dani’s words, giving voice to a lived experience from the MA.
 
Then a switch seems to flip and an actor rockets onstage from behind a curtain: schoolgirl Abbie (Coyle), getting ready for a night out. Her mum Kate (Eanna Ferguson) appears, trying to get her to change into something more modest, or at least put on tights. “Because of where we are,” Kate says, men think they have a right to treat girls the same as…

Jules Coyle and H Sneyd in Managed Approach. Pic: Open Aire.

The implication dribbles into silence, Abbie refuses to change her clothes, and we flick back to the microphone. This time it’s Tara’s (Tel Chiuri) words, who was first cautioned for solicitation at the age of sixteen. Then it’s Kate’s turn to speak directly to the audience, sitting unfortunately out of sight on Abbie’s bed, relating her memories of life in Holbeck, including the terror tears of the Yorkshire Ripper.
 
As the show carries on, following Abbie’s night out and its consequences, it continues to interweave the words of Dani, Tara, Ellen (Sneyd), and Sarah (Chiuri), and to mingle Abbie and Kate’s interactions with each other with direct address to the house. The performances of the company are excellent, demonstrating the complexity of the situation with skill and pathos, but the structure of the show is a bit stilted, seemingly unsure what kind of a play it wants to be, experimenting with a bit too many dramatic devices to form a cohesive whole.

Tel Chiuri, Eanna Ferguson and Jules Coyle in Managed Approach. Pic: Open Aire.
 
Managed Approach explores an under-told story, giving voice to the sex workers who lived through it, sharing their all-important perspectives on a social programme that failed to live up to its promises. The narrative of Abbie and Kate, meanwhile, enlivens the complicated response of non-sex worker residents of Holbeck to the MA, and how individual and generational trauma can affect one’s reactions. 
 
More than anything, it reminds us that everyone in it is human, deserving of respect and safety, and all were let down by a measure that was supposed to support and protect them.
 
Running time: One hour with no interval
Venue: Gilded Balloon Patter Hoose (Coorie), 3 Chambers St EH1 1HT
8-24 August (not 15) 2025
Time: 1:40pm
Tickets: https://www.edfringe.com/tickets/whats-on/managed-approach

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