The Pitman Painters' brush with fame
Inspirational tale that enthralled audiences at Milton Keynes Theatre.
Few of us in the cosseted south of England can comprehend the harshness of living in a mining village in the 1930s. Sent down a pit aged just 10, often being a family's sole breadwinner in their teens – and all for less than 3 a week.
The differences between the classes and culture are a favourite theme mined by dramatist Lee Hall.
He dazzled the world with Billy Elliott, the tale of a scally who dreamt of becoming a ballet dancer, and has followed that success with an inspirational portrait of tough, no-nonsense Geordie miners with an eye for art appreciation.
The Pitman Painters, which ran at Milton Keynes Theatre last week, was a heart-warming tale that was based on a true story and book by William Feaver.
In the early 1930s in a Northumberland town called Ashington, a group of miners regularly met in a hut to try and better themselves under the auspices of the WEA, the Workers' Educational Association.
The men worked all day on their bellies hewing coal from a seam, changed into their best suits, and spent their nights either down the working men's club or, once a week, at the WEA. The weekends were spent racing whippets and pigeons.
It was a rigid life and closed society which remained unchanged for generations as son followed father down the pit.
On this occasion their tutor arrived to teach them about art appreciation – but these were men who had never seen a real painting, had no access to books, and whose lives had, like all of the working classes at that time, never been brushed with culture.
The best way, he said, to learn about art appreciation was to have a go yourself – and they did – with truly remarkable results.
They were briefly patronised by a shipping heiress whose crystal clipped vowels jarred harshly with their often incomprehensible brogue.
Hall peppers his play with a rich and fruity dialogue that is frequently comical, sometimes cynical, and often heartfelt.
There's no side to these men. They're bluff northerners whose rough, calloused hands are surprisingly adept at using a fine brush as they are a pick and shovel.
David Whittaker's Jimmy (a spit of Peter Sellers in The Worker) is a terrier of a man, with flat cap, muffler and a suit that once fitted a slimmer body. Faced with an exercise to produce a religious painting of The Deluge he conjures up a dazzling image of a Bedlington Terrier, he fails in his attempts to paint net curtains because "we haven't learnt how to paint see-through yet."
He provides the play with the backbone of its laughs. Patroness Helen Sutherland, heir to the P & O line, admires his pseudo Van Gogh painting of flowers in a vase.
"Are they peonies?" she asks with cut glass accent. "No, I tried to do ponies but I had trouble painting their heads!" retorts Jimmy in his broad Geordie dialect.
When they hear that she enjoys modern art Jimmy is the first to pipe up: "You have come to the right place then pet. Most of these were done this week."
The tutor, too initially fails to comprehend the accent. It's used by Hall to separate the classes to great affect.
Central to the story was Oliver Kilbourn (Christopher Connel), a bachelor by circumstance, who was shy, introspective and weighed down by a life set inalterably set in stone. When given a chance to leave the mine he is left terrified by the idea. Betterment is incomprehensible.
Connel gives the man a passion and quiet dignity and it's heart-warming to see his confidence and maturity grow throughout the performance. By the final act this once proud pitman can stand tall among those better educated and erudite.
Deka Walmsley's shop steward, George Brown, lives by the rule book and a socialist's charter, citing chapter and verse every time someone wants change.
"No-one," he declares during one outburst, "is doing any painting in this art class!"
He almost meets his match with the disillusioned and bitter "dental mechanic" Harry Wilson (Michael Hodgson) who has a fondness for Russia and is apt to launch into a tirade against the ruling classes. The oppression of the masses is a pet theme.
Every character in the drama is richly painted. The warmth of the language and the camaraderie between the men brings back fond memories of When The Boat Comes In or Auf Wiedersehen Pet. There's nothing to beat Geordie humour.
The story seems to slow in the second half as the group face variable success, the onset of The Second World War and the nationalisation of the mining industry. What may superficially be a very human story is also steeped in the politics and history of our time.
The Pitman Painters returns to The National in December and tickets are selling fast.
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Tuesday 07 February 2012
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