Brassed Off review – stirring tale of coal and cornets moves Yorkshire audience to tears

4 hours ago 6

It’s odd that this most Yorkshire of stories has never been staged at Leeds Playhouse. That’s remedied with grit and humanity by director Amy Leach and her strikingly relevant production of the Paul Allen play based on Mark Herman’s 1996 film.

The Playhouse’s Quarry theatre is an enormous, awkward space that demands epic storytelling. With a name that suggests it has been dug from the earth, it’s easy to see why Leach thought the colliery story was perfect for this stage.

The most immediate and striking aspect of the production is the extraordinary tableaux she creates with Katie Scott’s design, a multilevel steel staircase leading to the enormous wheels of the mine deep below. Remarkable opening choreography sees men hewing coal and looking as if they are raising a flag on Iwo Jima. It’s an appropriate reference: what follows is a battle for jobs, dignity, pride and, in some cases, lives.

While Margaret Thatcher was the great enemy of the story in the mid-90s, the production adds political speeches and images of several recent prime ministers, from Boris Johnson to Rishi Sunak, suggesting it’s plus ça change for the northern working classes. “Ordinary working people” are still at the bottom of the slag heap.

Danielle Henry, right, as Sandra with Aria Trijonyte as Melody in Brassed Off.

The play tells the story of the Grimley Colliery and the brass band attached to it. When the mine is threatened with closure, and the men vote to strike or accept their fate, the question that really hangs over them is: if the mine shuts down will the band play on?

You almost certainly know the ending. The telling demands stirring brass music, and Leach has recruited members of Horbury Victoria and Wakefield Metropolitan brass bands to swell the actor-musician numbers. When they play, the chest of every local in the auditorium also swells.

There are moments when the story lacks nuance, but with the material Leach does a fine job conducting the band leader Danny (David Birrell), all gruff Yorkshireman; a sparky Danielle Henry as terrified Sandra; and the always reliable Andy Cryer as Jim who, like much of the audience, is moved to tears by the brass accompanied denouement.