Why Brassed Off is in Clara’s blood

She’s named after Clara Vale, the small Tyneside mining village where her grandfather’s generation mined. Darcy grew up in Stockport, but her mother’s side of the family come from the North- East, and are still based there.

“My mother grew up in Ryton and my grandfather and several of my great uncles mined in Clara Vale and Stocksfield. The previous generation – my great great grandfather’s – were all North Tyne valley drift miners,” she explains.

She previously appeared in the play, adapted from York-based writer and director Mark Herman’s film, in Oldham, in the same role of flugelhorn-playing Gloria, whose arrival back in the fictional Grimley brings hope for the future of the band.

“It’s really lovely to come back to the play and to a new place,” Darcy says of the production, which opens at York Theatre Royal before a UK tour that includes Darlington Civic Theatre.

“It was quite relevant in Oldham because one of the local bands used in the production was one talked about in the play. Now, to be doing it in the heart of the Yorkshire mining area is great.”

The cast visited the National Coal Mining Museum, near Wakefield, during rehearsals. “It was absolutely incredible. I’d never been down a pit before.

Clara Vale is obviously all blocked off now, but it’s a beautiful nature reserve,” she says.

“Our family holidays were always to the North- East to visit all the family and we used to walk around the reserve where the pithead was.

“We had the most wonderful guide at the museum – an ex-miner. It’s just incredible. It was massively helpful in terms of the play and getting our heads round what these men did day in day out for 12 hours.”

In the play Gloria returns to Grimley, after a decade away. The colliery band needs a flugelhorn player and that’s her instrument. Darcy grew up playing the cornet and trumpet, but always wanted to act rather than be a musician.

“The interesting thing about me as a player was that, in my teens, I had a fixed brace on my teeth and couldn’t play for two or three years. I did bits of playing, but had to put this wax stuff over my brace and it was quite painful,” she recalls.

She did an acting course at drama school, but is often employed as an actor-musician. She spent the Christmas period in a production of Robin Hood “playing forest calls on the French horn and stuff like that”.

“I brought myself an Irish flute last year, a really beautiful Irish flute which I should really start having lessons on at some point.

“There’s so many actor-musicians out there and so many courses that it’s almost becoming saturated with musicians. There are lots of people who play three or four instruments. You effectively need to be a one-man band. It certainly makes you more employable.

“I’ve always fancied a small lap harp, but I don’t know how useful that would be. I play most brass instruments because they’re very similar in technique.

Last year, I did a production of Chicago and learnt to play the trombone for that.”

A different local brass band will play on stage at each venue on the tour. “The interesting thing about Darlington is that the band we’re using is the Durham Constabulary band. Apparently, when we booked them they asked if we really wanted them because some of them were on picket line duty during the miners’ strike,” she says.

The production coincides with the 30th anniversary of the 1984 miners’ strike and Clara will be interested to see how the drama plays in different parts of the country, particularly those without a mining history. She recalls appearing in a Northern Broadsides show in the South, where they didn’t connect to the Northern humour as much as homeland audiences.

SHE wonders if the same might happen with Brassed Off in places like Cheltenham and Winchester. “It’s not part of their culture and experiences because there aren’t many mines down there. It’s a cliché, but it’s under their fingernails in the North. It’s so inherent, so vivid in their memories,” she says.

“I’m really interested to see how the play will go down this time with the anniversary of the strike. To see what response we get, and whether it gets people to open up about their memories of the strike.

“It’s such a wonderful play to be a part of because it’s got such great political and social integrity about it. Regardless of whether you were a Tory or a Labour voter at that time, there’s no denying communities and lives were destroyed. It’s up to you as an individual to argue whether you think it was justified or not.

“The play has such warmth and such heart to it – and it’s really funny.”

There’s also the emotional impact of the brass band music. “When we do run-throughs of the play in the rehearsal room the band’s not there. When we do rehearse with the band it lifts it to a whole new level and because of the nature of brass band music it’s so emotional. You can see it affecting everyone in the room because it’s so emotive.”

Brassed Off

• York Theatre Royal, Feb 14-March 1. Box Office: 01904-623568 and yorktheatreroyal.co.uk Darlington Civic Theatre, March 18-22. 01325- 486555 and darlingtoncivic.co.uk