Friday April 20,2012
By Chris Riches
 |
| Jane Holman and Chris Connel star in this production |
SO AUTHENTIC was alan Plater’s original 1968 Newcastle Playhouse production of Close the Coalhouse Door that the stampede of pitmen flocking to see it prompted its run to be extended five times. Now 44 years on director Samuel West has revived it with such grit and sheer unrestrained joy they’d better start block-booking those North-east coaches again.
It’s the stark history of a filthy industry that in Victorian times epitomised exploitation and child slave Labour. Plater’s work has been updated by his protégé and friend Lee Hall, author of Billy Elliot.
While elder brother John (Paul Woodson) risks life and limb down the pit he resents the freedom of his college-boy sibling Frank (Jack Wilkinson) and Frank’s feminist girlfriend Ruth (Louisa Farrant). Frank thrives on the novelty of his grandad’s pit tales but John’s just a cog in the machine and knows that while the union is powerful now, the politicians will surely betray and obliterate them.
West gives his characters licence to run amok in their terrace, dancing and performing alex Glasgow’s hilarious and memorable folk songs with riotous zeal. Chris Connel (as Jackie) and David Nellist (Geordie) particularly shine. there’s constant juxtapositions of power and impotence, greed and frivolity, Tory and Labour, sexism and feminism, young and old, celebration and fear.
While elder brother John (Paul Woodson) risks life and limb down the pit he resents the freedom of his college-boy sibling Frank (Jack Wilkinson) and Frank’s feminist girlfriend Ruth (Louisa Farrant). Frank thrives on the novelty of his grandad’s pit tales but John’s just a cog in the machine and knows that while the union is powerful now, the politicians will surely betray and obliterate them.
West gives his characters licence to run amok in their terrace, dancing and performing alex Glasgow’s hilarious and memorable folk songs with riotous zeal. Chris Connel (as Jackie) and David Nellist (Geordie) particularly shine. there’s constant juxtapositions of power and impotence, greed and frivolity, Tory and Labour, sexism and feminism, young and old, celebration and fear.
Plater – described as an “instinctive socialist” – died in 2010 but Hall’s revision allows for the demise of the great Durham and Northumberland collieries, giving the 1968 script a fitting end. But it’s through Glasgow’s songs that we realise just how great a slice of the community’s soul was destroyed when these great pits were put to sleep.
CLOSE THE COALHOUSE DOOR
5/5
by Alan Plater and additional material by Lee Hall, Northern Stage, Newcastle, 0191 230 5151, until May 5 then touring
CLOSE THE COALHOUSE DOOR
5/5
by Alan Plater and additional material by Lee Hall, Northern Stage, Newcastle, 0191 230 5151, until May 5 then touring
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