A Good Night Out in the Valleys at the Blackwood Miners Institute, review

By Charles Spencer 357PM GMT fifteen March 2010

The new National Theatre Wales gets off to a clever begin with this enjoyable, spasmodic shambolic but regularly compassionate show about hold up in a small former mining village where jobs are scarce, memories are long, and drink and bingo are the shun routes from grave reality.

More desirous productions are to come, together with a lost early fool around by John Osborne, a new fool around about the call of teenage suicides in Bridgend, and Aeschylus"s The Persians, staged on an Army banishment range in the Brecon Beacons.

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But this initial production, destined by John E McGrath, the company"s inventive director, is an unashamedly populist piece. Alan Harris"s sharp-witted book is formed on real-life stories from the Valleys, and there is a spice of lived experience about it, as well as a common clarity of humour and a pointy ear for dialogue.

I held the square at the Blackwood Miners" Institute, where a rope plays, the illusory impression of the physical education instructor takes to the theatre ready to go as a chicken, and the initial esteem in the raffle is a beef hamper. There"s a excellent using gag, too, about how internal businesses are forced to stand in up their trades in difficult times the butcher"s is additionally a rub the body parlour, whilst the caf doubles as the undertaker"s.

The heart of the story, however, is supposing by the bequest of the mining industry. One impression is dying, solemnly and bitterly, of pneumoconiosis, and an additional was traumatised as a kid by the miners" set upon when his family was hounded out of locale since his father was regarded as a scab.

The show interweaves a host of stories and characters, a little of that work improved than others, but there is a genuine clarity of low internal roots, and the six-strong expel move twenty characters to clear life.

Boyd Clack is superb as the hospital manager, both droll and touching as he struggles to keep the place going in difficult times. Amy Starling is a uninformed immature bent to watch as both his daughter Sue and a hilarious, gabby schoolgirl, whilst Huw Rhys impresses as both the failing miner and the scab"s son who wants to take punish on a total community.

Though infrequently disorderly and flawed, the show is sanctified with good munificence of suggestion and a little superb jokes.

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