Production nails Brass tacks

Perhaps it’s the sentimental gloss added by time that now wins audiences over so readily to the idea that, back then, values of community and hard work should maybe have been celebrated and not systematically destroyed.

This stage adaptation of the 1996 movie has been dusted off for a Touring Consortium Theatre Company production which bears the quality hallmarks of its co-producers York Theatre Royal and Bolton Octagon.

It can’t help but be warm-hearted entertainment, cut through with a seam of earthy humour and heartstring-pulling pathos. And at the moments when a dozen or so members of Haydock Band add their own plaintive music there ought not to be a dry eye in the house.

Director Damian Cruden’s production makes you appreciate how effectively original writer Mark Herman managed to blend a touching love story around social division, into a multi-layered drama about schisms within families, communities and cultural heritage caused by the Pit Review which sealed the fate of the coal industry.

Jokes are greeted like old friends, even if the slapstick of the second act opening is a bit over-heated. Andrew Dunn’s portrayal of Phil, the son in the shadow of his dad, does not quite convince, but John McArdle – right, as said Dad – effortlessly pushes all the emotional buttons.

Dawn Allsop’s set design, dominated by minehead winding wheels, almost steals the show with its effective and faded ‘grandeur’ in a production well worth seeing.

At the Grand until Saturday then Bolton’s Octagon Theatre next month.

David Upton