Pit and miss as mining history gets a bit messy

Close the Coalhouse Door, Lowry
IMAGINE the episodic, haphazard nature of “Oh What a Lovely War”, but with added dirt, and you are somewhere close to the spirit of Alan Plater’s stage history of North-East mining and mining unions.

Plater and composer Alex Glasgow put their hearts on their sleeves and sublimated much of their political anger as comedy for the play with songs, here cheerfully revived by Newcastle’s Northern Stage, directed with general flair but occasional lapses by Sam West.

Not that this is the show exactly as the late Plater — he died about 18 months ago — saw it. West has had playwright Lee Hall (War Horse, Billy Elliot) add a new introductory section and a coda, plus other tweaks here and there to bring the story a little more up to date. By up to date, of course, we mean beyond 1968, when it was first produced, long before Mrs Thatcher (immortalised here as the Meryl Streep poster for “The Iron Lady”, its eyes gleaming demonically) shut the industry down. So this key part of the story — its end — is missing. We begin with a suitably homely scene to introduce the cameraderie of the mining community and pretty much instantly we’re back to the 1830s and the roots of the mining unions. It’s a constantly changing timeline of characters and scenes, plus fast-moving changes of scenery from designer Soutra Gilmour. If along the way Plater an Co tend to give pitmen an almost mythically heroic status, they do at least balance the story by making it a play about almost 200 years of glorious failure.

The production doesn’t have the power or social relevance it once had and it has a problem in the middle (of three) acts, in which the style can’t overcome the relatively dull nature of events. What starts promisingly ends up almost outstaying its welcome: perhaps Hall should have cut more and added less. But there is still much to enjoy along the way.


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