ODYSSEY ’84
Sherman Theatre, Cardiff

PLAYRIGHT Tim Price’s ambitious retelling of the South Wales miners’ contribution to the heroic but doomed year-long strike against pit closures in the mid-1980s is clever, warm and oddly repulsive in its individualism.

Fresh from his success with his play Nye about Bevan and his creation of the NHS, Price has turned his attention to another labour movement epic, weaving the story of the South Wales miners’ part in the strike based on the Greek tale of Homer’s The Odyssey.

The device works well in parts, showing the journey of Rhodri Meilir’s reluctant striker John O’Donnell from a nervous public speaker to travelling the world collecting money for the strike.

The first half of the play is a wonderful depiction of life in a small Welsh mining village where friendship and camaraderie hold the community together around the looming and dominating presence of the coal mine.

John arrives at the pit head to vote against the strike on the orders of his young wife Penny, ably played by Sara Gregory. To his surprise, the men have already voted not to hold a ballot and will be striking to support their colleagues in Yorkshire fighting against pit closures.

The interplay between the striking miners is funny and shrewdly observes the tactical approach taken by the National Union of Mineworkers’ leadership.

The play takes off when the men picket other mines to bring them out on strike. The discussions between the pickets and the men arriving at their workplace teeter on violence as soon as the word scab is used.

But the tension mounts as O’Donnell and his two comrades, Billy and Dai, played by Sion Pritchard and Dean Rehman, move to picket the British Steel coking plant at Orgreave, South Yorkshire.

Director Joe Murphy has the difficult job of depicting the infamous battle, where police forces from around the country were mustered to attack the striking miners bussed in to picket the plant. The onstage scene is brilliantly horrific as our trio of South Wales pickets notice the police on horseback and the dawning realisation that they are being charged.

This is an intense and scarily accurate depiction of the horror of that day as a group of policemen push a rearing model horse around the stage with an officer with a raised baton sitting atop it with a glaring searchlight sweeping the stage.

Unfortunately, that was the high point of the drama which sinks into a gloomy focus on the impact on the individual. In a sometimes dreary and overlong second half, we hear the characters blaming the strike equally on both Margaret Thatcher and Arthur Scargill.

The union’s leadership is traduced as being as bad and as remote from the strikers as the bosses and the Tory government.

Despite the revisionism and historical inaccuracies, this is an ambitious telling of the strike from a Welsh perspective. But in trying to mirror the Odyssey it ultimately falls flat because of its focus on the individual in a collective struggle.

Runs until October 26. Box Office: 029 2064 6900, shermantheatre.co.uk