Economical, interesting tips and the feminism of class division

With Margaret for dinner at the Savoy; it's a birthday treat, and is because she found out from our minister (of religion, not our MP who is a minister of state) that it is economical (relatively - at least economical enough for a minister of religion to be seen doing) to go to the Savoy River Restaurant at 5.30pm for the pre-theatre menu (but if you're really being cheap don't have the wine, which is an astronomical price, and they will give you free tap water if you ask). This is my living economically tip for any older readers of this blog whose pension has been defenestrated.

Then to The Pitman Painters, in its last few weeks at the Duchess Theatre. It's by Lee Hall, the author of Billy Elliott, and it was at the National and on Broadway a few years ago having started out at The Live theatre in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. It's about a group of miners in the '30s who hire (through the WEA) a lecturer on art, who decides doing is better than seeing. They became quite famous as the Ashington Group of artists, and there is a gallery in a mining museum in Northumberland, not far from Morpeth.

The website of the Woodhorn Colliery Museum: http://www.ashingtongroup.co.uk/home.html (This is my interesting things to do tip for any older readers of this blog who happen to go that far north).

The play is funny and well performed, but there's a political point too. The final scene is just before the nationalisation of the coal industry; scenes of jubilation etc, and positive mention of the wonders of the National Health Service, soon to come into being. A few points were also made about the complete loss of the coal industry in the 1980s. I wonder what the plays of the future will say about the current NHS reform?

Margaret, who is always suspicious about my lack of feminist social awareness in doing more or less anything, but particularly in selecting her celebratory entertainment, asks, as she settles into her seat: 'Has it only got men?' I count the cast list, and it turns out there are three female characters, played by two actresses. One actress, it turns out, plays a working class woman in the first act and (tastefully) takes her clothes off to general consternation among the more respectable miners, while one plays an aristocrat, who doesn't (and in fact has a sequence of quite elegant period-style gowns). There must be a message about class division there, too.