The Pitmen Painters

When Lee Hall turned 'Billy Elliot' the film into a musical, he was careful to pay attention to the miners and their grievances. Now he puts them centre stage as he tells the true story of the Ashington miners, who briefly became the darlings of the art world in the 1930s. In a play that asserts the right of everyone to discover their creativity, Hall shows how the miners, who all take to painting like pit ponies to daylight, draw their strength from the community. His polemical fervour is admirable though there are times when the inevitable compression of events makes a true story feel like a fairy tale. He hankers after a world in which the miners can have both their community and their art, but he makes it clear that, in different ways, we are as far removed from that goal today as they were in pre-war Britain.