The audience took "Clog Dance" to their hearts because it belongs to Whitehaven. Composer, John Marcangelo, draws his inspiration from childhood memories of walking past Brew's Clog Shop on his way to Quay Street School, but writes songs for an international audience. Those clogs inspired the rock jig, Clog Dance, which hit the charts in 1979, and years later slowly evolved, with script and lyrics, into this musical drama.
It is that jig that both opens and closes the show. Incredible that a drama that commemorates the most terrible tragedy in the history of Whitehaven should end with a dance of such amazing vitality and joy! Yet it is simply doing what great drama has done since the time of Sophocles, celebrating the miraculous power of the human spirit to renew itself. Where can you go from here? you might wonder, as the first half closes with the lamentation of the town for its husbands and children, to Marcangelo's moving arrangement of Dvorak's New World theme in "Going Home."
After the interval comes the revelation, controlled by the memory of Grace, in the present day, breathing life into dead ashes. As Maria Morton, in the role of Grace as an 77 year old woman today, nurses with wonder the clogs her daughter has just discovered in an old trunk, Kate Johnstone dances all the longings of her youthful self, still intent on the clog dance in which she and Albert longed to prevail. She and her lover, passionately sung and danced by Brad Kavanagh, cherish hopes of escape from the mines to a new life overseas. When the "Sirens Sound" brings fate's answer, crashing into their tender "Harbour of Dreams" like a tsunami, they are thwarted by Albert's own courage and instinctive bond with other miners. But death itself is thwarted by a deeper miracle, and the mystery is movingly conveyed by the choreography as Grace lightly dances among the clog dancers, barefoot.
There is something really disturbing about the chorus of children joining Andrew Flynn in the brilliantly conceived role of the Paper Boy as a kind of Greek chorus, getting across the newsman's sinister axiom that "bad news is good news", with a glee that is almost demonic. Sean Donald, as the clog maker, Joe Brewster, dances with virile passion and still shows the maturity to accept that Grace will never love him as she loves Albert. Brad Kavanagh, whose voice has thrilled us since he was a soprano, proves what a sensational dancer he has become since performing the part of Michael in Billy Elliot, and conveys in the part of Albert a bedrock of principle and loyalty under his youthful impulsiveness.
It is the musical and choreographic shocks that make the show memorable rather than subtle characterisation. Though it cannot match the way "The Hired Man" makes action develop out of character or explore the anguish of difficult moral choices, it inspires its cast to sing and dance the spirit of their town.
Photos, above, Brad Kavanagh and Sean Donald dance their rivalry; left, the chilling chorus, "Sirens Sound."