Theater Review: The Pitmen Painters

Painting a Colorful Portrait of the Face of Art
By Lauren Yarger
British miners discover a new way to express themselves while at the same time painting a new definition of art on a previously blank canvas: one for the working class, in Lee’s Hall’s play The Pitmen Painters, presented on Broadway by Manhattan Theatre Club.

Hall, who brought us the stage version of Billy Elliot, brings to life another tale of miners striving to express themselves through the arts, this time, in telling the story of the Pitmen Painters, a real-life group of miner/artists known as the Ashington Group, for the area of Newcastle, England where they worked in the mid 1930s to mid 1940s. The story is based on the book by William Feaver.

Brought together to study art appreciation at a class taught by Robert Lyon (Ian Kelly), the men (the strong ensemble of Christopher Connel, Michael Hodgson, Brian Lonsdale, Deka Walmsley and David Whitaker) discover they have some talent and opinions about art and what it all means.

The play, with its tight dialogue (though sometimes hard to understand through the thick accents) and humor blends colorful discussions not only about art, but about society. Should art belong to the upper classes? Can the working classes produce and understand it without the patronage of the privileged?

The painters are part of a socialist movement that eventually nationalizes the mining industry and they struggle through just who owns the work -- the individuals who created it or the collective miners who sponsored the art class that started it all? Conflict between the classes also comes to a head when wealthy heiress and art collector Helen Sutherland (Philippa Wilson) offers to support the most talented painter of the group, Oliver Kilbourn (Connel) so he can leave the mines and paint full time – and maybe even explore the possibility of a relationship with her. Oliver finds out that members of the upper class aren’t the only ones who can be prejudiced.

Hall uses masterful strokes to tell the story. The dialogue is lyrical and the characters intensely likable, despite a tendency to make them more intellectual and even cleaner looking than you would expect working class miners to be (but then maybe that’s just prejudice talking…)

Director Max Roberts deftly positions the men and art (scenic and costume design by Gary McCann) to create a classy, interesting presentation. He also stages a nude scene, where a model, Susan Parks (Lisa McGrillis) drops her clothes for the painters, in such a way that if you blink, you might miss it.

Pitmen runs through Dec. 12 at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre, 261 West 47th St., NYC. Discounted tickets for friends of Masterwork productions, Inc. are available at http://www.givenik.com/show_info.php/Masterworks/275/individual.

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