Land of Our Fathers, Found 111, London, theatre review: Mining a rich seam of black humour and dormant emotion

Chris Urch has a natural ear for dialogue; even in this cramped situation, it breathes easily

Hovis, Bomber and Mostyn. (Polly Thomas)

Six Welsh miners are trapped underground following an explosion. It’s 1979, the eve of Thatcher’s victory – but the focus here is on the personal rather than the political. Chris Urch’s play (first seen at Theatre 503 in 2013) is an assured, well-shaded debut that exposes both the bluster and affection of male friendships in an increasingly nerve-fraying environment. The screws turn, as food and water supplies run low, and truths will out in this dark place.

That makes Land of Our Fathers sound grim as well as grimey – but while it certainly goes to some discomfiting places in the second half, the first is also extremely funny. Urch has a natural ear for dialogue; even in this cramped situation, it breathes easily. All the little details ring true - although comic bickering over the rubbishness of a Blue Riband, or how many Jaffa Cakes someone once fitted in their mouth, will soon seem like no laughing matter.

Urch convincingly pens the men’s split-second switches between expletive-filled, merciless piss-taking, and a kind of proud sentimentality and loyalty. He even nails the South Walian tendency for amusing understatement: “truth be told, we’re all finding it a bit hard of late,” says one of the miners while praying to god. These men are starving, injuries rotting, authority crumbling before their eyes.

Curly played by Tomos Eames and Chewy played by Taylor Jay-Davies. (Polly Thomas)

There’s a generous, trusting set of performances from a tip-top cast, which make even the unlikeliest moments – reciting the periodic table as seduction tool, or a flamboyant round of “My Favourite Things” – ring true. That’s just one of several songs used by the men to keep spirits up, ranging from the ridiculous (a close-harmony version of ‘Pretty Vacant’) to the sublime: their ‘Calon Lan’ gave me goosebumps.

Cornelius Booth and John Cording offer persuasive portrayals of pillar-of-the-community men for whom mining is a proud legacy, a cornerstone of their masculine identity, while Joshua Price as the young softy Mostyn is equal parts incompetent and sympathetic. Taylor Jay-Davies’ lithe Chewy and Tomos Eames lunking Curly touchingly play brothers whose lives are pulling, taut, in opposite directions, while Robert Jezek is the Pole who’s more integrated in the valleys than some of the locals. Credit is due to director Paul Robinson for getting such warmly relatable yet rigorously uncheesy performances from the cast.

Signe Beckman’s design is simple but effectively claustrophobic, with glittering coal on the floor, walls and ceiling; Hartley T A Kemp’s lighting seems to dim as their prospects get gloomier. I swear the cast look scrawnier in the hunger-gnawed second half.

Urch’s set-up sometimes seems just a little too schematic, a little too convenient of a way to force unemotional blokes to confront buried pasts and unacknowledged familial fault lines, but the increasing desperation of their situation sweeps all that away. And if I wasn’t quite convinced by the power struggles in the slightly overcooked second half, there’s still an admirable absence of mawkishness. That’s tricky to pull off with such material, but Urch mines a rich seam of black humour as well as dormant emotion.