Newsletter
December 2002
Coal Not Dole:
play about the strike to tour coalfields
At the 2002 Edinburgh
Festival a new play about the 1984/85 Strike was performed to wide
acclaim. Martin Reynolds, a spokesman for the Edinburgh Fringe Festival,
said 1,491 different performances took place during the festival and
a show did well to get single review.
"Coal
Not Dole got a total of four reviews, and all of them were positive,"
he added. "That is a great result and indicates the show was
a tremendous success."
The play is the
creation of writer-director James Graham and the tour producer, and
one of the performers, is Gary Roden, son of a striking miner.
After its success
in August 2002 in Edinburgh the play is to be taken round the coalfields
in February and March 2003. Here is the itinerary:
| ...Mansfield |
27th
- 28th Feb (Old Library Theatre) |
| ...Goole |
1st
March (The Gate Theatre) |
| ...Derby |
4th
March (Guildhall Theatre) |
| ...Ollerton,
Newark |
5th
March (Dukeries Theatre) |
| ...Lincoln |
6th
March (Riverhead Theatre) |
| ...Sheffield |
7th
March (Merlin Theatre) |
| ...Leeds |
8th
March (City Varieties Music Hall) |
The Justice Campaign
hasn't seen the play but here are the reviews of the Edinburgh Festival
performance, kindly provided by the production team. Shirley Dent's
review is a bit sniffy at times and she trots out a familiar objection
that art should be judged by aesthetic and not political criteria
but we can live with that.
Z Theatre
Productions –
Set in the industrial
North during the miners strikes of the eighties, 'Coal Not Dole' examines
the effects of pit closure threats and the resulting industrial action
on the people and communities involved. Familiar territory for social
commentary plays – but nevertheless a powerful drama as relationships
are tested and mining communities torn apart. I wasn't impressed by
Z Theatre's production of 'Agnes' (to say the least), but this is
very good theatre, even if the cast's accents are generally weak.
The narrative is snappy and real, the script funny and, in places,
touchingly poignant. Scrambled tomatoes anyone? A powerful cast add
up to make 'Coal Not Dole' an educational treat.
Review by
James Mullighan, the Scotsman – THEATRE: Crowne Plaza
(venue 39)
COAL strikes sweep
Britain. But trouble runs deeper than the threat of mine closure:
not everyone has voted for the strike, and father is pitted (sorry)
against son, husband against wife.
..... It's not hard to imagine that promising
writer director James Graham was drawing on family history here. He
partly succeeds, in producing a Ken Loach-style comedy-drama: lots
of "eh, by gum" Yorkshire humour offsets the community struggles
to stay together.
..... Graham's characters are six men
and women, overalled miners and aproned sewing machine factory workers.
As the lads fracture, the gals organise support groups to save jobs
the men are not sure they want anymore.
..... There are a couple of very funny
mimed choreographed set pieces: a bounding opening sequence to Hi
Ho It's Off to Work We Go, the Church Hall disco I Will Survive number.
..... The play works best when mixing
laughs and frowns: drama is always more effective when tension is
relieved with a good laugh.
|
Image
from the Edinburgh Festival programme
|
|
|
Review by
Geoff Kidder – (from:
http://www.culturewars.org.uk/coal.htm)
As someone involved
in supporting the epic struggle that was the miners' strike, I found
the characters in Coal not Dole only too life like, and the attention
to detail in the dialogue striking.
..... The frustrated local strike leader
unable to get working miners to join the strike. Other strikers who
were happy to make jokes about Scargill behind his back but followed
his leadership at the end of the day. It was left to Mickey the 'reluctant
striker' to question the bureaucratic running of the strike by asking
how you can have a national strike without a national ballot?
..... As the failure to make the strike
national became apparent, it was graphically brought home how the
divisions between geographical areas solidified and spread to cause
division and strife within communities and individual families.
..... As a piece of theatre this play
was highly entertaining, well acted, extremely witty and unlike much
retrospective work it encapsulated the feelings and attitudes of the
time. The spirit of resistance of the mining communities was well
captured, especially by the women. But at the end of the day the strike's
defeat and its comparison to the Luddites could only breed fatalism.
The playing of the music from the old Hamlet cigar advertisement for
what seemed an eternity reinforced the point.
..... This excellent play brought back
many memories but showed me that those seeking the spirit of resistance
today will need to look elsewhere.
Review from: http://www.culturewars.org.uk/
From Nottingham
Evening Post -
PLAY IS A STRIKING
SUCCESS FOR NOTTS STUDENT
BY POST REPORTER
23 August
2002
A drama by a Notts
student about the 1984-85 miners' strike could be performed across
the county following its success at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
..... Coal
Not Dole was written by 20-year-old James Graham, of Annesley Woodhouse.
..... The
drama student took the play, which looks at the way communities dealt
with the impact of the strike, to the prestigious arts festival earlier
this month.
..... More
than 400 people bought tickets to its 11 performances at the city's
Crowne Plaza.
..... It
received glowing reports by critics including those from The Scotsman,
the festival's official newspaper Three Weeks and Radio Forth FM.
..... They
praised James, a former pupil at Ashfield Comprehensive School, as
a promising writer, saying the play was poignant, well-written, well-choreographed
and performed with gusto and commitment.
..... James
wrote and directed the 70-minute play, which was performed by the
Z Theatre Company from Hull University, where he is a studying.
..... With
no connections to the mining industry, James researched the subject
by talking to local people involved on both sides of the dispute.
..... Following
its success, James is considering taking the production on a tour
of coalfield areas, possibly to miners' welfares.
..... He
said: "I never expected it to take off like it did. There was
a massive amount of interest and for that to happen at an international
festival is unbelievable."
..... For
one Notts actor in the play, 20-year-old drama student Gary Roden,
the play had real significance.
..... He
was two when his father, Stuart, went on strike for a year, joining
picket lines at collieries in Notts and Yorkshire.
..... Stuart,
41, who used to work at Silverhill Colliery, travelled to Edinburgh
to see the show on its closing night. He said it was a true reflection
of the conflict that took place.
..... He
said: "It was a difficult time for everyone. I personally was
only 23, married and had two young kids to feed. But I stuck by my
principles and refused to go to work, even if it meant no money coming
in to the household. I spent my days on the picket lines.
..... "Everyone
had their reasons for either going to work or striking. It split families
up and I know people who still don't speak today as a result.
..... "This
play captured all of that. It was both funny and touching. I think
it would be a great success if it was to be performed around the coalfield
areas."
Review by
Shirley Dent – from: http://www.culturewars.org.uk/
For all those
theatre companies seeking to get the review with such pullable lines
as 'touching and funny', 'I laughed till I cried and I cried till
I laughed', here's a hint: get a few miners in the line-up and add
on some brassy tarts with hearts.
..... This is not an indictment against
Coal Not Dole, which is a well-structured, well-narrated and
well-choreographed drama, performed with gusto and commitment by a
young cast who obviously really believe in and care about what happens
on stage and what is said on stage (and no, I don't mean the lines).
But any drama dealing with miners and touching on – even glancing
at – the struggles of the 1980s and all the baggage entailed
therewith now have to deal with baggage of another kind which has
nothing to do with the politics or ideology of that day or this. This
baggage is of the aesthetic kind.
..... Anyone approaching the subject
of the 1980s miners' strike has now to deal with that squidgy, warm,
bendable and dependable carpetbag called cliché. And yes, Brassed
Off and Billy Elliot, it is you I am pointing the finger
at.
..... Dancing-at-the-weekend-pit-workers,
fag-puffing-sweethearts, stoic-old-timers-who-crack-under-the strain,
the-mates-who-find-themselves-on-different-sides, the-scab-and-their-family,
the-wife-and-women-who-hold-it-all-together-and-even-discovers-new-found-talents.
It all sounds startlingly familiar, doesn't it? And that's because
it is both on and off stage. Cliché is truth condensed to saccharine
proportions, but it is nevertheless true, and to complain about these
characters would be to accuse Viz of going for cheap laughs.
..... What irritated me about Coal
Not Dole was the potential to break down cliché willfully
squandered, and the audience's lapdog willingness to be satisfied
with that cliché: a miner had only to pull a slightly non-plussed
comical face and the audience (which was a deservedly full-house)
would be punctured by chirrups of glee. Why? Because we've taken our
cue about what to expect from drama about the working class and working
life from heavily-romanticised versions portrayed in Brassed Off,
Billy Elliot and The Full Monty. Some of those films
are great entertainment but the aesthetic fallout has been a shorthand
that speaks without poetry.
..... Cliché may be true, but
Adrienne Rich's dictum that 'a lie is a shortcut through someone's
personality' is also true and I felt that this production took too
many shortcuts. What I want in mining drama is a Das Boot underground,
where the pressures and connections of human intimacy and human comradeship
in confined physical and mental space come to the fore.
..... If we siphon off all politics,
all social commentary, all ideology, all history from what mining
is and means, and just look at it for its aesthetic potential, then
it is truly extraordinary, a human conveyor belt underground that
powered the industrial revolution.
..... George Orwell used all his great
descriptive abilities to explore just that in 'Down the Mine'.
Mining is such a strange thing for human beings to be engaged in,
and it is startling, when we stop to think about, how little that
raft of 1990s miner movies showed of that dark below ground world.
..... Pit-poets writing in the 19th century
did describe this world, it flows through their lines like a dark
stream, and often it is the world that informs their aesthetic. Joseph
Skipsey describes Swinburne's ability to interpret Blake as the light
of a davy lamp illuminating the coal black pit of our minds. It is
a fantastic metaphor because it is both true and returns the aesthetic
world to the reader anew.
..... Full credit then to Coal Not
Dole's writer-director James Graham for opening with poise –
literally. The lads come in and strike gargantuan poses of Promethean
effort (at this early stage I was reminded of Tony Harrison's Prometheus
and the wonderful smelting of miners). Then – and I got excited
at this point – the Seven Dwarves theme tune, 'Hi-ho, hi-ho,
it's off to work we go,' piped up as the miners mimed – mmm,
er – work.
.....
I got excited because I thought 'A-ha, here's a production
that has caught on to the Disney-fication of miners and the miners'
strike now that they are no longer a threat and it is a political
irrelevance'. And I do think there was a real commitment in writing
and acting to bring the audience something that was true and true
in depth. But the lure of cliché was too strong.
..... There were moments where inspiration
shone through. The writing was true to voice but had enough fluidity
in that voice to let wit and innovation flow through. I particularly
liked the jibe at Arthur Scargill having put the 'dick' in 'dictator'.
The casting also showed the potential for the production to move beyond
the also-rans.
..... Mark Joseph as Mickey and Tess
Mitchell as Barbara really had it going on at moments, but needed
to be told to hold-it-back or bring-it-on in the same way as the script
needed to discipline itself at the same time that it pushed itself
on. I thought all these things simultaneously when the little matter
of ballots (or no ballots) was brought up then skipped over in a scene
between Mickey and Barbara.
..... My gold star goes to Kathryn Oliver
as Flora. With no make-up she convinced me she was a sixty-year old
stuck at a sewing machine for forty years. And she couldn't have been
a day over 21. As they say, talent is wasted on the young.
For further
details about the play, contact Gary Roden, manager of Graham/Roden
Productions, on 07732 087021.
