Cut-down season finale is a gem

UNDERGROUND MUSIC: The cast of the Coliseum's end-of-season show Close the Coalhouse Door: (l-r) Phil Corbitt, Matt Connor, Jane Holman, James Hedley, Andrew Vincent, Cliff Burnett, Maeve O'Sullivan and Samuel Hargreaves. Picture: Darren Robinson.

CLOSE THE COALHOUSE DOOR

Oldham Coliseum, to July 12

THE Coliseum has pretty much gone and done it again; namely turned a rather long-winded night at the theatre into something far snappier and more enjoyable.

And when I say “done it again”, the last time the Coliseum did a musical the result was the award-winning reboot of the previously tedious “Chicago”.

Admittedly much of the improvement this time is by judicious omission as much as liveliness.

Last time Alan Plater’s reverential Sixties look at 200 years of mining history toured, two years ago, it was treated with a little too much respect, given its full length (plus a bit more to bring it up to date) and had two intervals surrounding a pretty dull middle act. It seemed to go on for ever.

Here Kevin Shaw drops an interval and appears to have cut quite a bit of the text in-between, including some of the new end-section added by playwright Lee Hall to update the Plater original, which was written long before Margaret Thatcher shut down the industry.

Designer Foxton does a lot on a small stage, combining parlour, pithead and back yard on one set, and the cast is strong throughout, from Cliff Burnett’s doughty grandad to edgy brothers Frank and John (Samuel Hargreaves and James Hedley), the latter one who got away to university, now back home with his girlfriend; the other locked in his mining present and lack of a future.

Jane Holman is enjoyable back-up as the family matriarch too — especially when playing guitar or ukulele.

The result is still rather a lot of Plater’s love for the heroic, historic failure of the miners — who lost virtually all the many, lengthy strikes they called for better pay and conditions down the decades.

To counterbalance this the mining families at the centre of the episodic story seem a little more broadly drawn, which brings out the comedy, Howard Gray’s lively musical forms and the general air of a story told with pace. It’s a highly enjoyable way to close the season.