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Camden Theatre Review | The Pitman Painters | National Theatre |
THE PITMAN PAINTERS
National Theatre
LEE Hall, who wrote Billy Elliot, has used William Feaver’s book to deliver an absorbing, stimulating and challenging piece about working-class achievement.
The production, from the LIVE theatre, Newcastle, left me in tears, making me angry but eventually optimistic.
In 1934, Robert Lygon, master of painting at Armstrong College, Newcastle, arrived in the mining town of Ashington, Northumberland, to take over a Workers’ Educational Association class.
Its students, mainly miners, 40 or so, have found some of the preceding course irrelevant, tedious and boring.
They assemble in the YMCA hall, an old army hut, to await the arrival of Lygon (Ian Kelly), armed with the paraphernalia of an art appreciation lecturer.
At first middle-class and condescending, Lygon’s conversion is quick; like an excited gold prospector, he knows he has struck a rich vein.
Under his guidance they paint what they understand, and argue the merits of each other’s work. Here lies the brilliance of the dialogue.
Through confident and intellectual characterisation, Hall has rendered working men who are astute and assertive.
Their vision and hopes are clear. Taken up by the art establishment, they’re given a visit to London and the patronage of a rich local heiress. They are impressed, grateful, courteous, but not overwhelmed.
Hall captures the agility of the labour movement official George Brown (Deka Walmsley), a sergeant major of the union rule book. Christopher Connel conveys the passion and frustration of a true working-class artist.
Harry Wilson (Michael Hodgson) is the cloth-capped Marxist, while Jimmy Floyd (David Whitaker) the bouncy and cheeky Geordie.
Producer Max Roberts handles the working-class battleground with easy precision, capturing their natural relationship.
The group lived through the triumphs of the 1945-51 Labour government and education advance but the glimpse of utopia floundered – as it did in the 1980s – and this is where Lee throws down his challenge in one of the most uncompromising calls to working people I have ever heard.
Oliver paints and renews the union branch banner of forgotten values and aspirations. It has a resonant ring in these days when the Right seem to be in an unchallenged ascendancy.
The Pitmen Painters disperses the fog of defeatism. Perhaps we will start singing again, the great radical song: “England arise, the long, long night is over.”
I know I have.
Why not? The New Labour party tore up the score of The Red Flag.
Many of the paintings are still to be seen in the Woodham colliery museum in Ashington.
Until June 25
CNJ Booking Line
0870 040 0070 |
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