The production will mark the inaugural show at the Bridge Theatre, a 900-seat venue on the Thames near Tower Bridge, under its new ownership by Trafalgar Entertainment. Set during the 1984 U.K. miners’ strike, the show follows 24-year-old activist Mark Ashton as he rallies LGSM to form an alliance with a striking mining community in South Wales. The musical features an original score by Christopher Nightingale, Josh Cohen and DJ Walde, drawing on protest anthems, pop, rock, disco and the Welsh choral tradition.
The transfer cast includes Samuel Barnett as Jonathan, Matthew Durkan as Mike, Gillian Elisa as Gwen, Chris Jenkins as Gethin, Darren Lawrence as Cliff, Kirsty Malpass as Hefina, Madeleine Morgan, Sarah Pugh as Siân, Caroline Sheen as Maureen, Courtney Stapleton as Steph and Matthew Woodyatt as Dai, with further casting to be announced. Speaking with Variety ahead of the transfer, Warchus says he always treats a remount as a chance to “get access to it again and make little fiddly improvements and changes.” He never approaches an opening night as a finished product, he says: “The opening night is a record, a document of where you got to in the amount of time you had and with the resources that you had.” The move to a bigger house, he says, will also change how the production’s comedy and sound design land. Warchus adds that the production’s essential character, built on simplicity rather than spectacle, will not change with the move.
Beresford draws a parallel to audience reactions when the film was first released. Asked whether the story, set 40 years ago, has taken on new relevance, Beresford points to a line from a review of the film that has stayed with him: “Prejudice cannot survive proximity.” He says the story’s emphasis on LGSM members physically showing up for a community unlike their own still resonates. Warchus recalls watching a performance alongside recently appointed U.K.
Prime Minister Andy Burnham and noticing how the audience responded whenever the word “hope” appeared in the lyrics. The stage adaptation followed two decades after Beresford first tried to get the story told on screen. Beresford, in turn, says what drew him to Warchus was an aversion to visual spectacle for its own sake.
I’m not really interested,” he says, adding that their work together on the film centered on character. And I think we complement each other very well and have the same taste, largely,” Beresford adds. Asked how the show balances the AIDS crisis and the defeat of the strike against its comedy, Beresford says the two are inseparable.
He recalls a 2015 Pride march where Anne Scargill, then the wife of former National Union of Mineworkers president Arthur Scargill, approached him. Because it’s funny.'” On the decision to commission an original score rather than build the musical around existing songs, as the film’s beloved soundtrack had done, Warchus says jukebox musicals tend to interrupt their own storytelling.
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