15/02/2012
As a new production of Close the Coalhouse Door starts to take shape, actor-director Sam West talks to BARBARA HODGSON about his role in reviving a Northern classic
IN 1962 when Close the Coalhouse Door made its debut in Newcastle local people turned out in their droves, ensuring an instant sell-out.
What for many was a rare night at the theatre stirred regional pride.
At the heart of Alan Plater’s musical play – based on stories by Sid Chaplin – were working class heroes, miners and their families.
Knitted into the story of a couple’s golden wedding party were threads of mining history, flashbacks to hopes and disappointments with plenty of laughter along the way, while pulsating through it all were the vibrant songs of socialist songwriter Alex Glasgow.
It was political, pickaxe-rattling stuff long before the decimation of the coal mining industry in the 1980s really got the blood flowing.
After the warmth of its welcome in Newcastle, its transfer to London’s West End met with a reception that could be described at best as tepid.
But that was then, and we’ve since seen modern Northern classics such as Lee Hall’s Billy Elliot and The Pitmen Painters seduce Southern audiences with their spirit and charm.
Now even Sting is getting in on the act with his plans for a Wallsend shipyards-inspired musical called The Last Ship.
It will be interesting to see how a revival of Close the Coalhouse Door – opening in April on the site of its debut at the former Newcastle Playhouse, now Northern Stage – will be received this time when it goes on tour.
“It didn’t do particularly well then in London. It should have done!” says Sam West who’s directing the new production, a collaboration between Northern Stage and Live Theatre, which is based on Newcastle Quayside.
The London-based actor director – nominated for a BAFTA for his role in 1992 Merchant Ivory film Howards End and star of the just ended ITV1 series Eternal Law – is fully aware of his responsibility in taking over a Northern classic, whose creators are now all dead. “That’s one of the slight pressures of doing it here,” admits the 45-year-old when I catch up with him at Northern Stage, “but it’s a nice pressure.”
West remains best known for his stage, TV and film roles, but recent years – including his spell as artistic director of Sheffield Theatres – have seen him make his name as a director. He’s also recently directed his first radio play.
Hearing his enthusiasm for his new project, which will see Lee Hall write new material to bring the story up to date, assures us it’s in a safe pair of hands.
West has done his homework. He makes passing reference to visiting Woodhorn, the former colliery-turned museum in Northumberland, and when I mention the work of local photographer Keith Pattison, who covered the 1984-85 miners’ strike in Easington, he already knows it.
The background of the play is something West can connect with, regardless of what his own growing up as the son of famous acting parents Timothy West and Prunella Scales, might have been like.
At university he joined the Socialist Workers Party and was briefly a member of the Socialist Alliance. He mentions he’s a member of the council of Equity, the actors’ union, and while he’s not talking about himself when he says “sometimes you need a terrier to fight your corner”, you get the impression he could.
As an 18-year-old, West was in Western Australia, where his mother was directing his father in Uncle Vanya, at the time Alex Glasgow emigrated there with his family and he muses he could have passed the late singer-songwriter in the street.
As it happens, his connection with the play came about by chance.
He recalls that after Plater’s death he’d read an obituary praising the brilliance of Close the Coalhouse Door. Then he met Michael Chaplin – writer son of Sid – at a wedding and brought up the subject.
“I said, ‘I wonder who will revive the play’ and he said ‘why don’t you revive it’? I thought ‘that’s not going to happen’.” However, there followed talks involving Max Roberts, artistic director of Live Theatre and also Plater’s son-in-law, and Erica Whyman, chief executive of Northern Stage, and the seeds of a collaboration took root.
“And that was that,” says West. “They asked me, I was free and it’s very exciting.”
Previous revivals of the play don’t seem to have had the buzz of this one, which has Hall incorporating the 1984-85 Miners’ Strike.
He and West, who changed their mind about the initial idea of including a new song, have been deep in discussion about it in the capital (Hall’s home is just around the corner from West’s) ahead of Newcastle rehearsals which are soon to start.
On the day I meet West, cast details have been finalised but not yet released.
Having just spoken of a conversation with a North East taxi driver who’d seen Billy Elliot in London and remarked that the actors didn’t have proper Easington accents, West says: “You have to get it right and that’s something we’re going to try to do.
“The actors will be native to the North East or very convincing Geordies.”
West intends to tread carefully with the play, striking just the right note to bridge the time gap and connect with those too young to have a memory of the 1980s strike let alone the play’s 1960s context.
“One of the things I’m trying to do with Lee is to get back to that ‘68 version and to open it out in ways that are more about being true to the 68 version.”
In terms of framework, Plater’s play will sit in the middle rather than be part of an updated whole.
“We’re trying to preserve the piece,” says West. “I don’t want to say too much about it. We want it be a nice surprise.
“It will be good, it will be subtle and hard hitting.”
He adds: “We’re certainly intending to use all Alex’s original music. The play has beautiful songs and beautiful writing.
“One of the very interesting things about talking to Michael about his dad was how Sid’s style had come out in this play.”
Those rich stories, convincingly brought to life on stage, become important memories, he suggests, “when you destroy an industry like Margaret Thatcher did”.
“Culture nowadays is becoming about dressing up in the evenings for posh people and we have to remind ourselves that stories belong to the people.”
He’s looking forward to working in Newcastle, where in the past he has starred in RSC productions of Richard ll and (his award-winning) Hamlet.
West is glad, he says, that he doesn’t have to make his living as a director: “I find it much more difficult that acting.
“When actors say no to me, and they might for all sorts of reasons, I tend to take it terribly personally, but I can say no for the same reasons!” Ideally, he’d like to keep his hand in with directing once or twice a year, alongside his acting and also radio work.
He’s incredibly busy.
“I did Enron, which ran for almost a year, and last year I did a TV series and a film,” he says.
He recently starred alongside his father in Caryl Churchill’s two-hander A Number, a play about cloning which revisits the nature versus nurture debate.
It took them to Cape Town where his father “did a great performance– at 77!” He laughs: “My dad is just like a 25-year-old, if he’s unemployed for six weeks he gets really antsy.”
West’s mother, the former Fawlty Towers star, works “not so much”, he says, although they have just worked together on readings picked by Nicholas Parsons for the radio show, With Great Pleasure.
He’s just waiting to hear whether there’s to be another series of Eternal Law, where he loved being pitched in, student accommodation-like, and being able to walk to work in the beautiful city of York.
“I very much hope there will be. It was one of the happiest jobs I’ve ever done, and others enjoyed it.
“Whether they enjoyed it enough is another question.”
He hopes to be directing again towards the end of the year, and he also has a film coming out: Hyde Park On Hudson, about the royal visit George Vl made to President Roosevelt in 1939, in which he plays the king opposite Bill Murray’s President.
Following the meeting of the men who each struggled with a physical challenge – the king his stammer and Roosevelt with polio – George Vl returned with a renewed confidence, says West, in his role.
“I’m a republican but I think you have to recognise a job well done,” he adds.
Close the Coalhouse Door is at Northern Stage from April 13 until May 5 before heading off on a national tour which also takes in Gala Theatre in Durham from June 12-16. Visit www.northernstage.co.uk or call 0191 230 5151.
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