Lee Hall’s reputation precedes him. He has enchanted the nation with his touching tale of Billy Elliot, and it was with high hopes that I sat down to his adaptation of William Feaver’s book Pitmen Painters: Ashington Group 1934-84. Knowing Halls style, I was expecting socio-economic problems tied in with comedy; I was certainly not disappointed. The premise is a simple one, the story of a group of pit mining men from Newcastle in the 1930s, the Ashington group, who formed an Art Appreciation class, and astonished the country, and later the world with their ‘untrained’ art work.

These rough, ready miners actually hoped for an economics class. Unable to find a tutor, they invite Robert Lyon (played by Ian Kelly) to give an Art Appreciation class instead. Lyon starts off the class with slides of the classics, Titian, Michelangelo, yet quickly realises this is futile, for the miners have never been inside a gallery. He instead asks them to produce their own art, starting with a linocut. The audience have as low an expectation for the art as the miners themselves, and are thus truly blown away by the quality of it. Their art is raw, untrained and emotional. It portrays the grinding, frightening, physicality of work in the mines, coupled with the more mundane scenes of their community, and even the frivolity of the dog races. It gives a real, unaffected glimpse of working class Newcastle life in the early 20th century.