Close the Coalhouse Door, Richmond Theatre - review

Fiery music and politics in Lee Hall's reworking of this poignant portrait of pit life

Stoic: Thomas (Nicholas Lumley)

10 May 2012

Lee Hall, via Billy Elliot and The Pitmen Painters, has done more than most to edge coalmining into the cultural consciousness. It’s fitting, therefore, that he should provide additional material, most strikingly via a poignant end note, for this revival of Alan Plater’s passionate, angry 1968 musical play about the history of mining’s union struggles from the early 19th century onwards.

It’s not the most instantly accessible of dramas, as an insufficiently characterised couple’s golden wedding celebrations segue into flashbacks from mining’s past. Once we’ve hurtled through a couple of decades, however, it makes for rewarding, thought-provoking viewing; a plangent through-line is the miners’ continuing disappointment with the Labour Party, even after coal’s nationalisation. Samuel West’s perkily Brechtian production extracts every drop of drama from the myriad mini-scenes and tips knowing winks at gags us soft southerners are unlikely to get.
Designer Soutra Gilmour’s large pit wheel towers pensively over the stage, which is peopled by a hard-working cast of nine actor-musicians among whom Jane Holman as a pitman’s stoic wife stands out. Alex Glasgow’s evocative folk songs provide stirring interludes and underline quite what a sense of community was lost along with nearly all our mines.
Close the Coalhouse Door runs until May 12 (0844 871 7651, atgtickets.com/richmond). Also at the Yvonne Arnaud, Guildford, May 29-June 2.