CHRIS SEARLE recommends a work of love and deep admiration for a great musician
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Mining history to mark anniversary of coal industry nationalisation
On Behalf of the People
[Tom Jackson]
KENNY MacASKILL relishes a fictionalised account of the life and death of the principled Irish anti-colonialist, executed for betraying his English imperial masters
FIONA O’CONNOR admires an ambitious first novel that loosens South Africa’s rainbow collective to examine the racial tensions within
Aussie mining corporation murder, Liverpudlian ex-cop amnesia, a naive vigilante tries to reset capitalism, and the riddle of the dead psychoanalyst
SYLVIA HIKINS is persuaded by an entertaining play that the true miracle of Lourdes would be for attitudes toward disability to change
JAMIE BRITTON recommends this fine analysis of the architectural, ecological and infrastructural destruction of the Gaza Strip
On Behalf of the People
Carriageworks Theatre, Leeds
COMMISSIONED by the National Coal Mining Museum for England, this production of On Behalf of the People is one of the events commemorating the 70th anniversary of the nationalisation of the mining industry.
Written after extensive research at the museum and in former mining communities, Ray Castleton has created a family drama for The Melting Shop, which wears its political allegiance close to its heart.
The recognisable character types are imbued with just enough humanity to sidestep outright stereotype in a play whose focus is the generational conflict between George Mason (Ray Ashcroft) — a committed union man and Labour supporter who returned from WWI to find that the promised “land fit for heroes” was a lie — and his son Tom (Danny Mellor), a modestly aspirational veteran of the second world war.
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