Details

In the 25th Anniversary Year of the Great Miners' Strike, most of the cast of David Thacker's 1985 production come back together to revive this pioneering piece of verbatim theatre. What the critics said in 1985: "Using the starkly revealing words of the actual participants, Ron Rose's account of the recent conflict in the coalfields is a powerful piece of documentary theatre. It's a shocking experience. This howl of outrage may have lit a fire, even in somnambulant England hard to put out. The Company are wonderful." CITY LIMITS "Its verbatim accounts, assembled from countless interviews with striking miners and their families, speak of an open wound which no one has troubled to heal. It is a recurring theme of injustice coupled with victimisation. A packed audience received it all with rapt acclaim." THE DAILY MAIL "There are chilling scenes of faces bloodied, accounts of heads cracked open and impressions of an almost universally unsympathetic outside world of housewives, doctors and television producers. The acting is reverberatively fine." THE GUARDIAN "I see a great future for this play touring cities like Moscow, Sofia and Prague where they will welcome the news that the British Police State is even more brutal than their own." LONDON STANDARD

Cast/Performers

Margot Leicester, Barbara Marten, Howard Crossley, David MacCreedy, Barbara Peirson, Martin Riley, Stephen Tiller, Dyfed Thomas, Annie Tyson

Creatives/Company

Author: Ron Rose
Producer(s): Octagon Theatre Bolton, Azure Theatre Productions
Director: David Thacker