Let me begin by saying that Pitmen Painters was the best play I have seen thus far. It seemed to me that almost everyone enjoyed the play quite a bit. Pitmen Painters was full of passion, philosophy and humor. However, it was the passion and philosophy which truly captured me during the play.
The socialist overtones were quite apparent throughout the play, but I’m not entirely sure if it was a glorification of socialism. It’s true that Oliver turned down the stipend and instead decided to continue working in the mine; an obvious case of promoting the proletariat. However, what comes of his actions? Instead of having a much different life, Oliver (and the rest of the miners) doesn’t seem to grow, either artistically, which Helen points out, or personally. The miners latch on to the socialist movement hoping for change, but that change never came as was pointed out by the projector screen at the end of the play.
So what is there to show for in the end? Quite a bit in my opinion. The play was not a promotion of socialism, art or even the Pitmen Painters. It was both a warning and revelation about change. The play wanted to make clear to the viewer that a person cannot expect to latch on to an ideology and expect to be saved. Ideologies are merely abstract concepts of the world at a particular moment in time. They cannot be true because the world (and us as human beings) is constantly in flux. True change, personal rebirth, transcending yourself or whatever you want to call it can only come from within and without the help of false idols or flawed ideologies. To say that Oliver would have sold out by accepting the stipend is simply not true.
In the end, each of the Pitmen Painters sold out by rejecting the opportunity for personal change. Oliver, the rest of the miners and the dentist all decided to join the socialist movement, placing the opportunity for change in someone else’s hands. The unemployed man decided to join the war effort not because he really wanted to, but because he was convinced by recruiters that it could fulfill something missing in his life (probably the “honor” of having a job at last and being part of something “important/larger than oneself”). In both cases, each character, instead of looking within themselves to find what they truly wanted from life, decided to look outwards for something they thought could fill that meaning. Though their lives were tragic and their dreams left unfulfilled, the play and the characters in it is a message to the viewers that change is possible only if you have the will and courage to make it so.
