Radio review: Close the Coalhouse Door; Hard Boiled Eggs and Nuts; Don’t Start
When Lee Hall was called upon to update Close the Coalhouse Door, his mentor Alan Plater’s 1968 theatrical history of coal mining in the north-east, he announced with due reverence and sensitivity that it was a matter of “keyhole surgery”.
The original run of the docudrama had become a legend in Newcastle, being extended five times and attracting, among others, coach loads of miners. This may explain why those preparing its spring 2012 revival – a Northern Stage co-production with Live Theatre – seemed to tiptoe around the original text as if it were some holy edict.
Now that Samuel West’s new stage production has been adapted for radio, I only wish Hall had sharpened his knives and come at it with the instincts of a butcher. Based on stories told to Plater by Sid Chaplin and underpinned by Alex Glasgow’s glorious songs, the drama interleaves set pieces depicting the pitmen’s political struggles since 1831, when trade unions were set up, with scenes from a golden wedding party at a Geordie home in 1968. The righteous agitprop, while disinterring bruising statistics about mine owners who treated men – and boys as young as six – with callous indifference, sits uncomfortably beside the family story that does not have the space to move beyond cliches.
Written in the wake of kitchen sink drama, Plater’s play throws in everything including the kitchen sink. It’s a bit Brechtian, a bit surrealist and a bit JB Priestley, in what could be retitled A Feminist Calls, as the family’s university-educated son brings home his politically aware girlfriend, who turns up her nose at the other son – an unreconstructed miner – then makes a play for him. I loved the arrival of Harold Wilson and other 1960s politicians in the family’s living room to explain why coal will soon be as old hat as music hall, but much of the play’s structure seems lifeless and its components jar.
Hall’s contributions, though, grafted on to the beginning and end, are dazzlingly inventive. They include a sardonic skip through the political landscape of the past 40 years and an epilogue in which Tyneside workers now toil in a call centre, hinting at how much further Hall could have gone.
The adaptation to radio is wittily done, with scenery and setting transposed into words and the actors talking of coming to the studio. It features the stage production’s original all-singing, all-dancing cast, including Tarek Merchant as our guide, the Expert, and Paul Woodson, Jack Wilkinson and Louisa Farrant as the love triangle. Glasgow’s songs remain timeless and elegiac, with the lament of folk music and the caper of music hall.
Vaudeville made Stan Laurel the performer the world later acclaimed in his films with Oliver Hardy. With five marriages, a doleful onscreen persona that won hearts, and a career that took him across the Atlantic to work in a stage troupe with Charlie Chaplin before entering movies during the silent era, his life has been the stuff of several radio plays.
Colin Hough’s Hard Boiled Eggs and Nuts takes us back to the 16 year-old Arthur Stanley Jefferson (James Anthony Pearson, hinting at Laurel without parody), whose relationship with his invalid mother, Madge (Alexandra Mathie, spirited and humorous), was pivotal. Their scenes with the whiskery, doom-laden nurse (Ann Louise Ross) reach a delicious comic pitch.
Talking of which, Frank Skinner’s Don’t Start – his duologues about a couple who revel in arguments rich in intellectual one-upmanship, puns and verbal slapstick worthy of vaudeville – has just completed a second series. Katherine Parkinson is delightfully acidic opposite Skinner’s inventively comedic other half. Is it possible that it is more delightfully funny than ever?
Close the Coalhouse Door, R4, Saturday, September 29
Hard Boiled Eggs and Nuts, R4, Friday, September 28
Don’t Start, R4, Wednesday, October 3
The original run of the docudrama had become a legend in Newcastle, being extended five times and attracting, among others, coach loads of miners. This may explain why those preparing its spring 2012 revival – a Northern Stage co-production with Live Theatre – seemed to tiptoe around the original text as if it were some holy edict.
Now that Samuel West’s new stage production has been adapted for radio, I only wish Hall had sharpened his knives and come at it with the instincts of a butcher. Based on stories told to Plater by Sid Chaplin and underpinned by Alex Glasgow’s glorious songs, the drama interleaves set pieces depicting the pitmen’s political struggles since 1831, when trade unions were set up, with scenes from a golden wedding party at a Geordie home in 1968. The righteous agitprop, while disinterring bruising statistics about mine owners who treated men – and boys as young as six – with callous indifference, sits uncomfortably beside the family story that does not have the space to move beyond cliches.
Written in the wake of kitchen sink drama, Plater’s play throws in everything including the kitchen sink. It’s a bit Brechtian, a bit surrealist and a bit JB Priestley, in what could be retitled A Feminist Calls, as the family’s university-educated son brings home his politically aware girlfriend, who turns up her nose at the other son – an unreconstructed miner – then makes a play for him. I loved the arrival of Harold Wilson and other 1960s politicians in the family’s living room to explain why coal will soon be as old hat as music hall, but much of the play’s structure seems lifeless and its components jar.
Hall’s contributions, though, grafted on to the beginning and end, are dazzlingly inventive. They include a sardonic skip through the political landscape of the past 40 years and an epilogue in which Tyneside workers now toil in a call centre, hinting at how much further Hall could have gone.
The adaptation to radio is wittily done, with scenery and setting transposed into words and the actors talking of coming to the studio. It features the stage production’s original all-singing, all-dancing cast, including Tarek Merchant as our guide, the Expert, and Paul Woodson, Jack Wilkinson and Louisa Farrant as the love triangle. Glasgow’s songs remain timeless and elegiac, with the lament of folk music and the caper of music hall.
Vaudeville made Stan Laurel the performer the world later acclaimed in his films with Oliver Hardy. With five marriages, a doleful onscreen persona that won hearts, and a career that took him across the Atlantic to work in a stage troupe with Charlie Chaplin before entering movies during the silent era, his life has been the stuff of several radio plays.
Colin Hough’s Hard Boiled Eggs and Nuts takes us back to the 16 year-old Arthur Stanley Jefferson (James Anthony Pearson, hinting at Laurel without parody), whose relationship with his invalid mother, Madge (Alexandra Mathie, spirited and humorous), was pivotal. Their scenes with the whiskery, doom-laden nurse (Ann Louise Ross) reach a delicious comic pitch.
Talking of which, Frank Skinner’s Don’t Start – his duologues about a couple who revel in arguments rich in intellectual one-upmanship, puns and verbal slapstick worthy of vaudeville – has just completed a second series. Katherine Parkinson is delightfully acidic opposite Skinner’s inventively comedic other half. Is it possible that it is more delightfully funny than ever?
Close the Coalhouse Door, R4, Saturday, September 29
Hard Boiled Eggs and Nuts, R4, Friday, September 28
Don’t Start, R4, Wednesday, October 3
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