WHAT a remarkable bunch of men these were!

By day ordinary Northumberland miners working at the coal face at Woodham Colliery. But they wanted to study at a WEA evening class.

When no tutor could be found for the course in economics they had chosen, they settled for a very different art appreciation. They found that they were rather good at creating art themselves.

Their work was taken up initially by a local philanthropist and art connoisseur, and subsequently by national and international art establishments. So was born the Ashington Group.

So what if their glory days, as depicted in Lee Hall's funny, vigorous, unsentimental drama, lasted only from the mid 1930s until the nationalisation of the pits in 1947? So what if the planned Ashington University never materialised? So what if the movement is now virtually forgotten, and the men's work unrepresented in galleries? (Though there is a current exhibition of it at Newcastle, destined for London – belated recognition).

They shook, if just briefly, the art world from its complacency and ivory towers.

This passionate examination of a time and event makes for a tale stuffed with human interest.

But Lee Hall goes further. He waves into it the message that art is not just for the elite, privileged classes, but for everyone. With often gritty humour at the expense of academics, dealers and pretentious hangers-on of the art world, and the social and linguistic gulfs that rift them for the miners, he attacks culture barriers, and asks fundamental questions about art itself, like does it have to mean something, and what is its place in our lives?

The minimal staging is enlivened by projections of the men's work. They depicted what they knew, their daily lives, families, pets, and the results glow with a raw innocence and truth. So, universally, do the performances.

And if the ending is downbeat, and the promises of the 1947 political scene unfulfilled, this remains one of the finest, thought-provoking, amusing, most compassionate plays you're likely to see.