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The Herald Scotland
22-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Herald Scotland
'This is a play that dazzles': Blinded by the Light, Traverse, 4 stars
Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh Neil Cooper Four stars In December 1982, twelve miners descended 2000 feet below the surface of Kinneil Colliery in Bo'ness. This was no ordinary working day, however, but a sit-in protest at the announcement by the National Coal Board of the pit's imminent closure. Two years before the Miners' Strike, and with no support from the unions, the protest's failure was the shape of things to come as British working class culture was transformed forever. Almost forty-three years after the Kinneil sit-in, Sylvia Dow's play excavates this piece of local history in a play that is both mournful and monumental. As it honours the recent past, it also looks to the future in a parallel plot in which a couple of centuries hence everyone is living underground, with the perils of outside an alluring totem of what went before. For those who occupy both time zones in Philip Howard's production for Dow's Sylvian company and the Bo'ness based Barony Theatre, the prospect of change for the better is something to aspire to. Read more This is the case both for Jerry - eighteen in 1982 - who becomes our narrator, and for seventeen-year-old Lily Seven, who has set her heart on going out into the upper world. Jerry, his old school socialist dad Matt and sceptical work mate Andy only want a living wage. Lily Seven and her friend Freddie Nine, meanwhile, read old books en route to a hand-me-down enlightenment that sees them look to an even bigger future than the one they occupy. Dow, Howard, and their cast of five fuse 1970s agit-prop with the sort of dystopian eco-fable that fuelled sci-fi films from the same era that in turn looked back to the brave new world of E.M. Forster's 1909 short story, The Machine Stops. The result in this piece, developed from a ten-minute short performed in 2014, is a lovingly realised tale of hope in a darkened world. Those living through each era criss-cross the centuries on Becky Minto's pitch black set, as Philip Pinsky's quietly seismic underscore pulses the play's light and shade. Andrew Rothney as Jerry, Barrie Hunter as Matt and Rhys Anderson as Andy leave their mark in a way that forms a legacy for Holly Howden Gilchrist's Lily Seven and Reece Montague's Freddie Nine to reclaim. As worlds change when history is made, this is a play that dazzles.
BBC News
29-04-2025
- Sport
- BBC News
Everton fan, 80, ticks Bramley-Moore Dock stadium off bucket list
An "Everton-mad" fan who has been told he has months to live has said visiting the club's new "out-of-this-world" stadium was one of the best days of his life. John Gordon, 80, who has advanced lung cancer, said seeing the club's Bramley-Moore Dock ground and "going to heaven" were the only things on his bucket friend and fellow Toffees fan Gerry O'Brien helped organise the visit to the new waterfront stadium on Gordon, from Billinge in St Helens, said it was a "double whammy" as he also got to return to his beloved Goodison Park, where he was first taken as a toddler by his father. The former welding foreman at the National Coal Board said: "The new stadium is out of this world.""It meant everything to me to see it."Getting to returning to the "holy ground" of Goodison Park to sit in manager David Moyes's seat was a lovely bonus, he said. "It wasn't just the icing on the cake, it was the cherry on top, too," he said. Mr Gordon said the visit had given him a "big boost" and "perked him up".His wife of 53 years, Winfred, said: "He had a lovely day. He couldn't stop talking about it when he got home." Mr O'Brien, an Everton season ticket holder, said it was an incredible day."John was over the moon," the 79-year-old Gordon said he cannot thank his friend or the club enough for organising it."Gerry is a real gent and I couldn't ask for a better club."It is the best club in the world." Everton have two more home games to play at Goodison Park, the club's home for 133 new £750m waterfront stadium can hold 52,888 people at full capacity, about 13,000 more than Goodison, and has already opened for several test events. Listen to the best of BBC Radio Merseyside on Sounds and follow BBC Merseyside on Facebook, X, and Instagram and watch BBC North West Tonight on BBC iPlayer.
BBC News
25-03-2025
- General
- BBC News
Miners' wives 'had to support each other' during strike
"We needed to be together and support each other because in this area, the majority of the miners were working," recalls Sally 73-year-old and her friend Sue Piotrowski, 71, were in the minority as the wives of striking miners in Nottinghamshire between 1984 and three-quarters of the country's 187,000 miners went on strike, but in Nottinghamshire, only around a quarter joined the action out of 30,000 Notts Women Against Pit Closures campaign had more than 30 groups, representing pit communities across the county. Ms Higgins, part of the Mansfield Women's Support Group, said: "It was the worst year, it was the best year, horrible things happened, good things happened."The nationwide walk out between March 1984 and March 1985 was a defining moment in the history of British coal mining and was the biggest industrial dispute in post-war Britain.40 years on, Ms Higgins, from Rufford in Nottinghamshire, has conflicting emotions of that year. When her husband went out on strike, she thought they could cope in the short term, but she had no idea how long the dispute would last."Summer was OK, but then it came to cold, no coal, it was cold and horrible." "How on earth did we manage without a wage for a whole year?," she the difficulties they faced during the strike, she also remembers a real sense of community as women rallied round to help each other. "The camaraderie, the Christmas parties, the best we'd ever had. We had gifts from everywhere," she women had to support their families in ways they had never envisaged, becoming public speakers while travelling the country to raise money, so they could feed and support their loved ones during the Higgins helped at a soup kitchen to feed striking miners and also spoke publicly to raise funds. She said the women supporting the strike made it the best year and gave each other the confidence to be who they are today. 'Communities divided' The strike was a last attempt by the mining unions to save the industry after the National Coal Board announced 20 pits in England would have to close with the loss of 20,000 Nottinghamshire, the majority of miners chose to carry on working, which caused divisions in a quarter of the county's miners joined the national strike, according to the National Coal Mining Piotrowski, from the Ollerton Women's Support Group, remembers feeling isolated when her husband chose to join the strike."You had to straighten your back, pull yourself up from your boot strings and just stare them down," she recalled."You've got to believe in what you were doing and I think if we believed in it, that gave you strength.""We weren't fighting for money, we were fighting for our community, our jobs, for our livelihood."The experiences of women during the miners' strike are part of an exhibition in Mansfield, Nottinghamshire. 'Into the Light' Exhibition - Notts Women Against Pit Closures 1984-1985 is at Nottinghamshire Mining Museum.
