Pride

There are some sights that once seen are nev­er for­got­ten. Pride, a true-life tale set dur­ing the 1984 Miner’s Strike, pos­sess­es two crown­ing visu­als. One is Imel­da Staunton, ven­er­at­ed char­ac­ter actress of stage and screen, clasp­ing a red dil­do and cack­ling with pure joy. The sec­ond is the blonde mul­let worn by actor Dominic West. It’s some­where between a renais­sance gentleman’s dig­ni­fied hair­piece and a urine-soaked fer­ret. It steals every scene, espe­cial­ly the one in which, after scream­ing, ​“I love dis­co”, its own­er duly dom­i­nates the dance­floor of a Welsh com­mu­ni­ty clubhouse.

West’s Jonathan is in the val­leys of south Wales with the tin-pot activist alliance, ​‘Les­bian and Gays Sup­port the Min­ers’. His char­ac­ter is one of a small ensem­ble, led by the pas­sion­ate and com­pelling Mark (played bril­liant­ly by Ben Schnet­zer) to fundraise for and lat­er befriend the strik­ing min­ers. Ear­ly scenes in Lon­don show Mark becom­ing fas­ci­nat­ed with the min­ers, see­ing in their anti-estab­lish­ment fight for recog­ni­tion an echo of his own bat­tle. ​“What’s the point in sup­port­ing gay rights but no one else’s rights?” he says from a podi­um in Gethin’s (Andrew Scott) book­shop HQ. Soon they’re all shak­ing coin-buck­ets and hit­ting the road to Wales with the proceeds.

The fusty details of an ​’80s under­ground hang­out are so good you can almost smell the yel­low­ing books. Cos­tume design ranges from activist chic (Mark has a way about him) to total square (George MacKay’s Joe is pos­si­bly still being dressed by his mam) to grim ​’80s jumpers (sport­ed by all min­ers). This makes events feel cred­i­ble with­out ever over­shad­ow­ing the writ­ing. First-time scribe Stephen Beres­ford cracks open a rip-snort­ing real sto­ry which folds in enough overt, insid­i­ous and insti­tu­tion­alised homo­pho­bia to con­vey what LGSM is up against. AIDS lurks in the back­ground too. The biggest achieve­ment of Beresford’s script is to know when to take his foot off the ped­al on the main sto­ry in order to let us see and feel the social fab­ric of the era.

Using inter­views with the real vil­lagers from the Dulais and Swansea val­leys, Beres­ford shows the ten­sion that greets the LGSM on arrival. Even as rela­tions har­monise, the threat of an attack from the most prej­u­diced vil­lagers nev­er entire­ly fades. Yet, once in Wales, the com­ic ele­ments begin to take off. Some humour occu­pies wink-wink, nudge-nudge ter­ri­to­ry. Wit­ness a dod­dery old dear with loads of ques­tions about les­bian­ism. Even these broad laughs are played with com­mit­ment and with­in such a metic­u­lous­ly con­struct­ed social real­i­ty that it’s hard not to be swept along.

When its respite from the com­bat of human rights activism, humour attains the role of essen­tial relief. Inas­much as they are bones thrown to amuse­ment-hun­gry audi­ences, jokes work with­in this nar­ra­tive as glue between char­ac­ters. Wit is the cur­ren­cy that enables Pad­dy Considine’s adorably shel­tered Dai to thrive in a drag club.

It’s rare to get such a heart­felt sto­ry of sol­i­dar­i­ty between peo­ple that on the sur­face are from such dif­fer­ent worlds. Warchus has assem­bled a stel­lar cast to play this mélange. They sing their parts nice­ly as indi­vid­u­als but glo­ri­ous­ly as a chorus.