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Re: Brassed Off - live

Review from The Guardian - March 18th.

Plays often make good movies. Films rarely turn into successful plays : 
remember the fearful example of the RSC's Les Enfants du Paradis. But Mark 
Herman's Brassed Off works a treat at the Crucible, not least  because of 
the vibrant theatrical sound of a genuine colliery band.
Paul Allen's stage adaption sticks very closely to the outline, and much of 
the dialogue, of the movie: as before, we see the painful consequences for a 
group of South Yorkshire miners of the closure of their local pit and the 
desperate last attempt to keep the colliery band intact as a tribute to its 
dying leader, Danny.
In some respects, Allen has even improved on the original. The romance 
between Andy, a luckless young miner, and Gloria, the southern exile who 
returns to her roots and turns out to be employed by the pit management, is 
sharpened by a post-coital scene in which they air their passionate 
differences. And, in this version, Gloria enlists the help of the militant 
miners' wives to raise the money to send the band to the Albert Hall rather 
than simply writing out a cheque like Lady Bountiful.

Of course, there is a loss as well as gain in the transfer. You miss the 
actual physical texture of a Yorkshire mining village, Gloria is left to 
carry out a rather awkward imaginary argument with the invisible pit 
management and Allen's device of presenting the action through the eyes of 
Danny's grandson places undue strain in a boy actor.

But overall, the event is a great success. It is heartening, in these 
straitened times, to see a regional theatre presenting a story that reflects 
its own community. And there is something about the authentic sound of brass 
 - and Grimethorpe Colliery Band is one of four groups that will be 
alternating during the run - that is profoundly moving. You could argue that 
their very quality tends to undermine Danny's complaints about the band's 
wobbly sound, but the moment when you hear them distantly playing in the 
theatre foyer while on stage a miner's furniture is repossessed brings alive 
the story's constant tension between aesthetic aspiration and ugly social 
reality.

Deborah Paige's production, which will be coming to the Olivier (London) in 
June, makes excellent use of the Crucible's wide open stage.
There is also high class acting from Peter Armitage as the obsessive Danny 
who finally realises that the sound of music cannot compensate for the death 
of a community, from Freya Copeland who lends Gloria a sharp-suited sexiness 
as well as playing a mean flugelhorn and from James Thornton as her 
guilt-ridden lover.
But the strength of the evening lies in the way the play articulates the 
anger of Yorkshire communities not just against pit closures but against the 
erosion of a way of life. The play speaks directly, and very emotionally, to 
its audience and their response in Sheffield was unequivocal.


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