Barbara Frame reviews The Pitmen Painters, Fortune Theatre, Friday, October 1.
Knowing of The Pitmen Painters' enormous success in London, I had high expectations, and Patrick Davies' brilliant staging of Lee Hall's brilliant play far exceeded them.
"We just wanted to be able to look at a picture and know what it means."
In 1934, this impulse leads a group of Northumbrian coalminers to art appreciation classes.
Looking quickly mutates into doing, and within a few years the Ashington Group is attracting national attention.
This comes at a price, as tensions develop between individual advancement and group solidarity.
Their tutor, the one person without whom nothing could have happened, uses his association with the group as a vehicle to further his own career.
A wealthy patron loses patience and interest.
Often repeated is the wish not just to make art, but to "go into the world and change it" - to make the enjoyment of the arts something for everyone, not just those on the moneyed side of the class divide.
Given today's preoccupation with rubbishy commercial culture that emphasises passive consumerism rather than active participation in the arts, this solemnly optimistic goal seems especially poignant.
As always at the Fortune, the set and costumes are impressive, with plain wooden chairs and dusty-looking browns and greys relieved by interesting Fair Isle knitwear.
Projections on to large screens enable the audience to have a good look at some of the art.
All of the performances are stunning (although a few words of northern dialect do not come across quite clearly).
I particularly liked John Glass' performance as the talented Oliver Kilbourn, who comes to understand his own inseparability from the group.
Ross Johnston adds understanding and a comic dimension as Harry Wilson, trying endlessly to reconcile the artistic experience with dogmatic Marxism; and Robert Tripe, as tutor Robert Lyon, visibly battles his incomprehension of working-class attitudes and loyalties.
How apt that a play about the importance of the arts heralds the Otago Festival of the Arts, which will officially open next Friday.
Very, very warmly recommended.
