He’s firmly associated with the Hull Truck Theatre Company and, apart from occasional forays into Edinburgh and London, he champions ‘the North’. Politically he leans to the Left, but the plays are about folk whose lives are intertwined with the northern working classes rather than politics per se.

Happy Jack (1981) is a two-hander about the lives and relationship of Jack, a miner, and his wife Liz. Jack is ‘a miserable bugger’. Oddly, the play and their lives are revealed in reverse order.

The play opens with several minutes of straight narration before the two actors assume any characterisation. Given that they’re the only characters, and the set was stark, dull-coloured and mostly bare, and with the additional difficulty that there was only a handful in the audience (perhaps after Covid you’ve not yet resumed the habit of regular and enthusiastic theatre-going), for a short while I imagined that the evening would be difficult for the cast to navigate. However, once Simon Parr and Mary Powell started to play the actual characters, and assumed the local accents, rather than just perform as narrators, the play took off.

We saw domestic scenes of an ordinary, humdrum and hard-working life. They listened to music on the old gramophone, argued over food, discussed their health, remembered their holidays, and swore at each other. But the swearing was ‘shit’ and ‘bloody’, fitting for the North of 50 years ago, and ignored the fouler words we seem to be using these days.

Simon, as Jack, was short-tempered, unromantic, and aware that the pit was all he would ever experience. His one surprise was that he wrote poetry – simple stuff, but it scanned and showed some feeling for his surroundings. Simon trod these paths with confidence and a convincing Yorkshire accent. It was a strong performance and he gave it life – difficult when the man you’re depicting is a man of few interests.

We half-expected Mary Powell as Liz to be overshadowed by his aggressive northern working-class demeanour but, when the subject matter was appropriate, she dished it out to him and stood up for herself. But she supported her man through his tough working life, and clearly loved him. Her long monologue at the end of Act I about her worries re pit accidents, and her appreciation of Jack’s softer qualities, closed the first half beautifully.

The least successful moment was the chanting of the ‘miner’s plea for recognition’. This was dirge-like and unemotional, when it required sprit and attack, as Jack recited his core belief.
Costume, changed during the action, added some interest and colour to the stark setting, and assisted in the definition of time and place. Braces and a scarf for Jack, and aprons and a cloche hat for Liz, were good examples. Also they neatly exploited the moments when they had to portray other people in their lives – the holiday camp MC and the neighbour, Taff. Furniture, just a couple of chairs, was moved to hint at a living room and a cinema.

Fittingly the best scene was saved until last, when the encounter for their first date was played as a complete romantic scene, until they admitted the reality, as the two of them, making the most of the humour of the situation, stumbled through a few embarrassed phrases.

Getting the season going with a two-hander was no easy task, but the company, that’s two actors and the host backstage, worked hard and got the season off to a good start. Director Cliff Francis and the cast of two scored many times in a demanding piece of straightforward social history, laced with personal memories.