CityLife

The Enemies Within

The Enemies Within
Bolton Octagon Studio
December 15, 2009

IT’S quite difficult to keep up with all that’s on offer at the Octagon these days. Under new artistic director David Thacker’s management, the Studio is offering a complete season of its own alongside the main house. There’s also another space called the Lab, where people of the stature of Sue Johnston have been appearing.

I have to confess I’ve only just fully clocked all this, unfortunately, because I’ve clearly missed some highly interesting theatre. But not, fortunately, the quite brilliant final production of the Studio’s autumn season, which not only deals with a vital slice of recent British history but is also a notable landmark in theatre itself.

The Enemies Within by Ron Rose (The Bill, Heartbeat, Between The Lines and 60 stage plays) probes the 1984/85 miners’ strike and its aftermath; the script having been stitched together from extensive interviews with miners and their families.

This verbatim technique has, of course, since been adopted in countless other plays on contemporary subjects - but it was Rose, director David Thacker and virtually this same cast of nine, who, at London’s Young Vic Theatre 25 years ago, helped pioneer the method.

Exceptional

Judging from reviews of the time, the original had a pretty stunning impact and it’s still pretty devastating now, telling it like it was, as the state, under Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, determined to crush once and for all what she dubbed “the enemies within.”

As the stories of the camaraderie and the hardship - and, above all, the state-sanctioned police brutality - pile one on another over almost three gripping hours, you can’t but emerge moved, shaken and angry.

Thacker and his cast are obviously utterly, passionately, devoted to the piece and the performances are all absolutely exceptional. It’s a truly brilliant ensemble that quite rightly got a standing ovation.

The subject matter is history now, of course, rather than the white hot topic it was when the play was first produced. But 25 years on, this unmissable piece of theatre remains a salutary reminder of just how all-powerful the state actually is in this little old democracy of ours.

Until December 19, 2009.

Tweet