The Pitmen Painters

Lee Hall's poignant, funny, accessible account of the story of the Ashington Group - a collective of Northumberland miners tutored as artists by Robert Lyon, master of painting at Armstrong College Newcastle - has scarcely been off the road since Max Roberts's production premiered at Live Theatre Newcastle in 2007.

It occupied the National Theatre from 2008-10 before heading to Broadway and touring the UK, and now bunks up in the West End, a couple of miles down the road from Hall's 'Billy Elliot the Musical'.

History has handed Hall some extraordinary material in the true tale of these working-class men who became an art-world cause célèbre in the '30s and '40s thanks to their striking, uncontrived art.

He tells their story with a deft mix of cosy warmth and clear-eyed lack of sentimentality. You will not want for amusing scenes in which salt-of-the-earth miners with impenetrable accents come face to face with airy-fairy art-world luvvies.

But the central questions of how art, class, nature and nurture interact are brought to boil in Trevor Fox's magnetic, heart-breaking performance as Oliver Kilbourn. The group's brightest talent, he is given the chance to abandon his life in the mines and become a full time artist, and he must forever live with the consequences of his decision.

Roberts's production is intimate and simply staged. But a series of projector screens foreground the art of the group - all the special effects this wonderfully human production needs.