Black Stuff

“I promise, you will never understand.” When these words are whispered into audience members' ears toward the end of Black Stuff, we feel a collective sense of shame. It's unlikely anyone present has ever mined for coal, so we can only imagine what life was like for the men and women living in early 20th-century colliery towns. The trouble is that the same can be said of the play's cast.

Yes, they evoke the suffocating darkness of the pits, the tinnitus-inducing clatter of industrial machinery and the threats of cave-ins and gas leaks, but they have no insight to pass on. Ideas are routinely thrown up relating to the strain the work placed on home lives and unfair profit distribution, but rarely do they yield any sense of resolution. Of course the performers are mirroring the ambiguity of real life, but their methods ultimately seem non-committal. An intense performance can't disguise a poorly structured, overly abstract work.

Based in Wales, they're publicly negotiating with the nation's past in a manner that's ultimately too hard-hitting. Watching Black Stuff is a jarring, visceral experience, to the point where you don't engage with its content because you long for it to be over. While you emerge from the show with your clothes covered in soot and your ears ringing, little else is to be taken away from this physically demanding piece of promenade theatre.