A gleam often comes into the eyes of those who caught Howard Goodall and Melvyn Bragg's musical of Cumbrian life on the land and down the mines before and after the first world war, during its brief West End run almost 20 years ago. Then they mutter something about it being a great lost British musical. Well, this rare professional revival, complete with a new song, proves them right.
As English as Elgar, buttered toast, loamy soil and pelting rain, Goodall's rich and gorgeously melodic score provides as sweeping an emotional landscape as the geographical features of the Lake District countryside where we follow the lives, loves and losses of one family over two generations.
In the programme, Goodall suggests that the arrival of the blockbuster musical in the form of Les Misérables contributed to The Hired Man's failure. I'd hazard a guess that it might be more to do with the fact that Goodall and Bragg's piece almost entirely lacks the kind of rousing feelgood factor that musical audiences so adore. This is a show that, despite its bygone English rural setting, is without nostalgia or sentimentality. Despite the musical form it has a real robustness, as it tells of the hardness of ordinary people's lives, whether it is driving a bargain in the hiring ring, eking out a living from the land or surviving the terrible conditions of the Whitehaven mines.
Then if the pits don't do for you, the first world war will, likely as not. The politics of survival are an intricate part of the mix, whether it is the emotional sacrifices of Emily, who gives up her one great love, or the struggles of the trade unions to get better conditions for the men.
It may not send you out of the theatre on a high, but this is a genuine three-hankie theatrical experience, charting the inner lives and struggles of those who had plenty to weep about but managed to find small joys. Joanna Read's beautifully acted and sung production is one of her very best; the West End would be foolish to ignore it.
· Until September 27. Box office: 01722 320333.
