EVERYONE knows Brassed Off and Billy Elliot, while The Pitmen Painters and John Godber’s Salt Of The Earth have done the rounds too, mining stories all.

Alan Plater’s Close The Coalhouse Door dates from 1968 and has slipped away from the public eye until now, brought back to life by director Sam West to mark the death of the Hull playwright last year.

Who better to provide additional material to top and tail Plater’s social comedy-drama and bring it up to date for Northern Stage and Newcastle Live Theatre than Lee Hall, writer of Billy Elliot and The Pitmen Painters.

And so the stage is dominated at the start by a billboard of Meryl Streep as The Iron Lady. When it is lifted out of sight, her exit is accompanied by a jibe: “Margaret, pet, you’ll never get to heaven. I know that.”

Hall’s contribution is worth it for that line alone, but he makes telling contributions elsewhere, not least in the coda that has the 21st century former miners swapping for coal for call centres.

“It might be history to some people,” says the programme cover.

“To us, it’s family, pet.” Plater does indeed concentrate on the family bonds of miners, as the stories of Sid Chaplin are turned into a play with the help of flinty folk songs by Alex Glasgow and the guiding hand of The Expert (Tarek Merchant), a bearded boffin type thrown in for “cheap laughs”.

Chaplin’s stories reflects all the major strikes, victories and disappointments in British mining history from the formation of the first unions in 1831, recalled and re-told by the north eastern family members while their own story unfolds in 1968.

One son, Frank (Jack Wilkinson), has left behind the mines to study at university, while his brother John (Paul Woodson) has headed down the shaft.

Free-spirited student Ruth (Louisa Farrant) threatens to tear them apart in the central love story.

Political satire is to the fore, mimicking past prime ministers, digging at Tories and New Labour alike (bemoaning the loss of real Socialism, to a burst of knowing applause).

Soutra Gilmour’s revolving stage doubles for house interior and pit alike, one turn almost causing the already limping, walking stick-carrying Chris Connel to topple over.

He didn’t, but he made a joke of it, typical of a show with leeway for improvised comments, not least impromptu references to Scarborough – home town to Ruth – after the cheer that greeted the dig that she came from the south.

Connel’s chain-smoking trade union man, Jackie, is in scene-stealing waspish mode, and there are powerful performances too from the joke-telling David Nellist and Nicholas Lumley and Jane Holman, as mother Mary, with her singing and musical skills a particular pleasure.

West’s marvellous production has wit, balls, poignancy, passion, plenty of politics, Sixties kitchen-sink clout, marvellous songs and ruddy good performances.

Hall’s finale, laying out an alternative history from 1979 that never came to bear, is an added sting in the tale, and his post-coal war, despairing vision of Call Centre Britain is humorous yet haunting.