You might wonder why David Storey’s 1969 play about a Yorkshire miner’s family has been revived at all, especially with Orlando Bloom. Whatever next? A Hollywood Room at the Top, with Keanu Reeves as Joe Lampton?

Some leisurely opening scenes give us a cosy, rosy world, sprinkled with coal dust for authenticity. It’s all endless fags and cups of tea, genial raillery, neighbours entering through unlocked back doors without knocking. Mr Shaw (Tim Healy) is a miner with a year to go, who dotes on his wife (Dearbhla Molloy) and is determined for his sons to be doctors, lawyers, businessmen. So, Colin (Gareth Farr) is a senior manager in the car industry; Steven (Orlando Bloom) is a teacher, but yearns impotently to be a writer; and Andrew (Paul Hilton) was a lawyer until he chucked it in at 40, set on being an artist.

Storey’s portrait has no class axe to grind and is full of empathy. Healy is wonderful as the old miner, proud of his sons, but baffled by their restlessness. And what of Bloom, the principal attraction? He may make an acceptable elf, but can he really act? Yes, he can. His accent sounds well-nigh perfect, at least to these soft southern ears, and his movements have a matching bluntness, turning more hesitant as the play progresses. Rather than stage presence, he exudes absence, but that is a compliment. He is in character as Steven, wrapped in sad, wounded speechlessness.

Hilton is also excellent as Andrew – lanky, moralistic, full of troublemaking energy, determined to expose the secrets and lies at the heart of this apparently happy family. It is not an original theme, but the intensifying battle between parents and children is riveting. Unfortunately, Andrew’s characterisation strikes you as increasingly improbable. His anger and resentment seem hopelessly undermotivated. By 40, unless we have suffered extreme abuse or neglect, most of us have reconciled ourselves to the fact that – surprise, surprise – our parents are only human. It may be that Storey is signalling Andrew’s desperate immaturity, the perpetual adolescence of the creative artist. But I think he has just got his age wrong.

Still, it is thought-provoking and sometimes intense stuff, ending with painful revelations, or at least accusations, and a conclusion that is agonisingly inconclusive. Emotional repression and inarticulacy, Storey convincingly demonstrates, are not afflictions confined to the English middle classes.

Duke of York’s, WC2

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