The Pitmen Debaters

Pitmen Painters at Tate Gallery
Originally uploaded by noollag

[I went to see this play with my program, + this is the review I had to write for my Modern Drama class]

The Pitmen Painters, now playing at the National Theatre, is the story of a few pitmen who accidentally take an art class and wind up with accidental success. An already interesting story known in the art world as that of the Ashington Group, the playwright Lee Hall pulls from it a number of debates on where money belongs in art. While not literally faithful to the original scale of the group, the play gives us a strong sense of the passionate dynamic of the artists.

Throughout the 2 hour and 40 minute production, the cast remains a solid company, even when the action lags, pushed to strong characterization by the director Max Roberts- unsurprising, as Roberts is a founding member of Live Theatre, Newcastle Upon Tyne. The group's tutor, Robert Lyon, is given an appropriately conflicted sensibility by the talents of Ian Kelley. Playing his foil Oliver, Christopher Connel is an occasionally over-loud bully, who none the less manages to reel it in during more sensitive scenes. The most commendable performance of all is that of Brian Lonsdale, who transforms himself from the unhappy unemployed miner into the acclaimed Ben Nicholson with such a marked transformation of posture and accent that the audience hardly knew he was the same actor.

In the National Theatre's hulking auditorium it would seem that it would be easy for the action to get lost, but Gary McCann's design gives us a succinctly communicative set which utilizes but does not strain the audience's imagination. Projections of the paintings appear over the actors heads when needed, and the sounds of the pit provided by Martin Hodgson which appear between scenes give us a constant reminder of where these men come from.

And where these men come from seems to be one of the central sticking points for their art throughout the play- Hall enters us into the debate about why art is made, and who it is for. For the pitmen, it is a personal expression of their world, and they feel that nobody but them could have created such works. For the art collectors, the pitmen are a quaint occurrence to be admired for their raw experiences, and possession of their paintings acts as a status symbol, a symbol of their 'with-it-ness'. But the pitmen don't really "get" the commodification of their art- to them it is something which would be absurd to put a price tag on. As Oliver says at one point in the play, "A funny thing, once you've painted a picture, you feel it’s part of your life.”

As the pitmen set to tearing each other to pieces over their ideals about their art, the audience is swept up and along, and one feels they would like to dive onto the stage and engage the actors as their characters. Though it tends to drag toward the end, The Pitmen Painters is a thought-provoking treatise on money’s place in art- just don’t spend too much of your own on it.