I heard
some people at the interval complaining that this was not what they had
expected and that they were bored and depressed. I can see how this could be
one’s reaction as the play essentially got the audience to look in on the lives
of three families in a mining community where not a great deal happened until
towards the end. The three families were all on stage in different areas all
the time with the action generally fading in on one group and away from the others
– there was not a great deal of connection between the families apart from
being neighbours.
Anne-Marie
Duff was striking as the mother in one family with her young son, a suitor and
an abusive husband. The second family highlighted the father who got very drunk
and his daughter and her best friend. The third grouping was a mother and two
sons – one of whom was married but had also got a local girl pregnant.
Without
going through the whole story line, we followed the lives of these families and
everything wandered along – until towards the end when there was an accident in
the pit, killing the husband of Anne-Marie Duff.
I really
enjoyed watching in on these families and felt the storyline was enough to
maintain my interest. However, it was rather in the ‘grim up North’ mould and
on reflection, I am not so sure what the ‘takeaways’ were. Certainly the
(absent) pit owners got a bad press – their greed having compromised safety and
caused the accident. The play did, nevertheless, act as an excellent evocation
of a bygone age – of tight knit communities where everyone knew everyone else’s
business.
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