Broken Legs Blog

Eyes down for a full house! Derby Theatre’s “Welfare” recreates the bingo hall at the Derbyshire Miners’ Holiday Camp in Skegness, transporting the audience through the decades as we begin at the holiday camp’s conception in the 1920s, to its closure in the 80s.

The show is framed around a game of bingo, with each audience member given a bingo card as they enter, and Ivan Stott as Bingo Bob acting both as our bingo caller and our tour guide across the years. Each number that is called out refers to a different year, and, as we grab our dobbers and keep our fingers crossed for a house, a scene is acted out, telling a different part of the lives of a Derbyshire family who regularly visited the holiday camp.

The play begins with Kat (Tiana Maria Harrison) breaking in to the old bingo hall, trying to discover more about her dad. It is there that she meets Bingo Bob and is introduced to this fantastical bingo game. From the 1920s, where she sees her great-granddad falling ill due to a bad cough caught in the mines, to the 40s where the camp is commandeered as an army training camp, to the miners strikes of the 80s, the play is infused with historical details whilst still managing to tell a grounded story.

The story itself is nothing to write home about. The plot amounts to boy-meets-girl, they have a child, child grows up, meets a partner, has a child, and repeat. In trying to cram in too much history, various details are often lost, and certain characters flit in and out without causing too much impact on the audience. Some moments that could be more poignant and meaningful, such as the war effort, or racism faced by Kat’s mum Angelica (Mya Fox-Scott) in the 80s, feel tokenistic and fall flat in their attempts to shock.

The play excels in its portrayal of different types of entertainment across the years, with the plot often grounding to a halt as we are treated to a Charleston in the 20s, a brass band in the 40s, and disco in the 70s. There are smatterings of audience interaction throughout – various cast members talk to the audience as they enter, and some audience members were dragged onto the stage to join in the 70s disco number – but it is not too in-your-face for those who are not fans of audience interaction.

The “main” character changes as we race through time, with Jo Mousley’s Patty being our initial focus-point as she grieves for her brother lost in the war. We are later introduced to Patty’s son Jack (John Holt-Roberts), and follow his love affair with Hungarian refugee Zofia (Hannah Winter). Mousley, Holt-Roberts and Winter have a great relationship together onstage, and the scene where Zofia and Patty tease Jack on the beach is a joy to watch, capturing a smaller moment in their lives that isn’t heavily influenced by Hungarian uprisings or North Sea floods. We are finally introduced to Kat’s parents Danny (Rhys Wild) and Angelica, but we spend relatively little time with them for us to care too much about their predicament, as Danny gets dragged in to the strikes, partaking in a charity boxing match that sees other cast members dressed as Thatcher and Scargill.

Stott as Bingo Bob is definitely a highlight of this show, deftly leading the audience through the story with cheeky asides and winks, whilst Harrison as Kat lacks the charisma required to get the audience on side, gurning her way through dance numbers and lacking the gravitas needed for some of the more serious scenes. The final message of the show feels a little confused – the cast, joined by members of the community in supporting roles, proclaim that “Welfare will continue”, despite the mines being shut, and the Miners Welfare now sitting derelict and forgotten. It wasn’t clear what the characters were referring to with this statement.

Overall, this is a fun night of theatre, with the bingo concept a strong idea that I feel could have been executed a little better. The singing and dancing throughout makes up for the slow, wandering plot, and I can imagine many people who have fond memories of the Miners’ Holiday Camp very much enjoying this jaunt to the past.

Tom Morley, October 2024