Brassed Off Archives - North West End UK

25Jun

By Paul ClarkeNo Comments

Yorkshire & Humber

Brassed Off – Leeds Playhouse

Britain has had two civil wars, and the second was the titanic battle that ran between 1985 and 1985 as our nation’s miners who were the shock troops of the industrial working class took on Thatcher’s Tory government. This stage revival of the hit movie Brassed Off takes place a decade after that bitter dispute in the fictional pit village of Grimley where the miners are agonising whether to vote to take a big redundancy package and let their mine die. Meanwhile, troubled young miner Andy is finding love with his school flame Gloria who has come back home, but is she who she appears to be? Paul Allen’s witty and often bleak adaptation also uses the colliery’s brass band - led by obsessive conductor Danny who believes music is the answer to everything - to explore the idea of wh...

Brassed Off – Octagon Theatre, Bolton

The Octagon Theatre in Bolton resounds to the sound of beautiful Brass this Autumn as we open their new season with an adaptation by Paul Allen of the iconic 90’s film of the same name, exploring the effect of the Miners’ strike through the prism of the Colliery band. Set a decade after the seminal events of 1984, Director Liz Stevenson has successfully transferred some of the grit of the original to the stage and added wistful musicality to the mix, but the authenticity of working-class culture is missing, sacrificed on the altar of whimsical nostalgia and an inappropriate feel good ending. The set design (Simon Kenny) evokes the disused grandeur of a closed coal mine, the broken Colliery wheel is suspended above a black circular stage, a conveyor littered with coal and acting as a ram...

Brassed Off – Theatre by the Lake

Music is a universal language, and it has been at the heart of many working class, Northern communities for generations. And audiences at Theatre by the Lake get the privilege this month of hearing and feeling how brass band music welded people together, gave them strength and pride. The stage adaptation of the hit film Brassed Off blasts into the Keswick theatre and touches the soul. The actors who have come together for this production, in association with the Octagon Theatre Bolton, and Stephen Joseph Theatre, are more than triple threats, they are triplet blowing brass players, who blend seamlessly in with local bans people from Penrith Town Band. The bandsmen and women give a great musical and acting performance in this production. The story of the ballot on whether to tak...