Pride review – a collaboration between gay rights activists and miners in the best music | National Theatre

A A group of LGBTQ+ activists from the 1980s have started fundraising for a south Wales village during the dark days of the miners’ strike. It leads to long-lasting relationships among the community with great lasting results. This piece of queer/mining history might sound like an unlikely way for a Richard Curtis film to be happy – but it really happened.

There is, in fact, already a film. Pride, since 2014It was created by bucket-loads of national treasures including Imelda Staunton and Bill Nighy, created in the same “against-the-difficulties” mold as Billy Elliot and The Full Monty. The beautiful new music also includes cinematographer Stephen Beresford (book and soundtrack) and director Matthew Warchus, who created the show and produced it.

The story begins when Mark (Jhon Lumsden) founded Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners in 1984. That community, he argues, is persecuted as it is, in a time of visible discrimination against homosexuality and limited legal rights. The activists joined forces with the Onllwyn miners and collected money to lift them out of the poverty caused by the strike.

This production leans in a spirit filled with joy like the film, perhaps for good reason: mental sugar is a difficult subject, from the persistence of homosexual violence to the trauma of leaving a marriage (and the subsequent rejection) and the problem of Aids and the breaking of the contract of Margaret Thatcher.

It’s all very quick on its feet, taking place on a standard scaffold and gantry structure (designed by Bunny Christie) where protest speeches are made and carried. The show removes some of the film’s visuals (although it retains some of the best lines of the movie) but enhances it with music, movement and more theatrical ideas.

Five narrators tell the story together, sometimes acknowledging us as listeners in direct addresses. This is obvious, not difficult but interesting, especially in the recent scene of Jonathan (Samuel Barnett), the group’s actor, who has a show-stopping, bittersweet show, You Can Be Better, about his HIV infection.

We get a few stories from the rest: Mark’s right-hand man Mike (Matthew Durkan) is unknown, as in the film, and Jonathan’s boyfriend the bookseller Gethin (Chris Jenkins), whose story about breaking up with his mother is not as devastating as what Andrew Scott did on screen.

However, the story of the nervous Bromley (Lewis Cornay) and his coming out is very touching, with Mother 1’s song full of vulnerability and a desire to be seen for who he is. Then there’s his lovely promotion, announcing I’m Into Guys. It’s a shame that Steph (Courtney Stapleton) is the only lesbian here (she’s joined by others in the film) but she’s still incredibly twisted.

The music is amazing, even though there is a lot of it. Welsh choral music (and a lovely number in Y Ddraig Ar Ein Baner, or The Dragon on Our Flag) rubs together moving ballads and disco, and comes with as much wit as heart. He also switches gears emotionally, some tearjerking, some cheeky (“Two, four, six, eight, is the brass really straight?” is a one-act song) and even a dark joke about Aids.

What makes this show a meaningful addition is its example of how assembly can affect racism. It is very important that we return to a time when human rights are being restored, where diversity is seen as a threat and intolerance is a conversation that exists on social media.

This is a way of loud music, which reminds us of ways to love each other, and a reminder that in order to overcome our fear, we must talk to those we fear. As a song, it is much more than the sum of its parts: a wonderful piece of British cultural history, very interesting, very important.