Brassed Off

It was great to see the Ringwood & Burley Band on stage (and marching through the audience), integrating so well into the production.  They were complemented by a company of actors who had clearly put a tremendous effort into their roles, not only assimilating natural-sounding Yorkshire accents, but also doing convincing imitations of brass band musicians.

The stage play is drawn very heavily from the original film.  On the one hand, that’s entirely reasonable, since it needs the narrative arc and the sharp dialogue.  On the other hand, it means a huge number of scene changes, which is rarely desirable in a play, and only achievable by either a black box presentation or, as in this case, by using back-projection for the pit-head, street, town centre and coach.

There were lots of excellent performances.  Who to mention?   Jo Dey as Shane, narrating the story from a child’s perspective, and also putting in a very animated turn conducting the band.  Anna Daniels cracking up under the strain of poverty, watching her husband Phil (Steven Reynolds) going to pieces, unable to support their family and yet buying a new trombone.  Luisa Calchinotto as the local girl returned from university to join the despised colliery management and dealing with the tensions of having a foot in both camps.  Then there was the well-timed comedy, particularly from Peter Beardsworth and Steve McTaggart, providing a much-needed contrast to the darker moments of the play.

A very fine production.

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