EVERY show has sold out for Welsh mining disaster play, Land of Our Fathers, at Newcastle’s Live Theatre this week... which is no surprise for original cast member Josh Price because it’s 60 years since Tyneside’s last pit closed.

“In all fairness to Tara who produced this tour with Theatre503 and Wales’ Millennium Centre I think the team were not keen to choose just any venue, but somewhere that could actually relate to the piece,” says Price, who plays one of six miners trapped underground.

“We’ve even added an extra matinee and all the tickets have gone for that too. Do you know what, if this show was premiering in Newcastle and it hadn’t have previously trialled any where I would have been nervous. I do think after London and Wales that this play has been successful and I’m not too nervous about how it will be received. Even if you’re not from a mining community or family there is still something in this play for you.

He plays the youngest miner, 17-year-old Mostyn, who becomes trapped on his first day underground. “Throughout the story you find out the real reason that Mostyn has come down the mine, along with a lot of other stories as well,” says Price.

The plot recalls a controversial period when Margaret Thatcher was elected Prime Minister and ultimately waged war on Britain’s powerful mining unions.

“I think playwright Chris Urch didn’t want a production to be all grey and he didn’t want to preach about how much the miners hated Thatcher and it’s more about a generation of lost voices. I think he felt it was more important to show the audience the camaraderie that miners had rather than the bitterness everyone thought they had over the mines closing,” he says.

The May, 1979, set debut drama by Urch has gained a pedigree following a Welsh tour in 2013 and gained a West End run before London’s Theatre503 put the production on tour and recently announced that it will return to Charing Cross, London, at the Found111 venue, in March.

“Last year we did a five-week run at Trafalgar Studios, in London, and the piece was then developed and premiered at Theatre503 in Clapham Junction the year before that.

“I didn’t workshop the show, but when it was first cast I came on board and I was still in training in my second year at Guildford School of Acting and my agent sent me to audition. So, I’ve been underground with this play for two years. It certainly feels like that,” jokes Price.

His father was a miner and so was his grandfather. “Obviously, I broke the mould when I said I wanted to sing, dance and act at drama school. My father and mother have always been supportive, so there was no Billy Elliot being sent back to the boxing class moment. I mean, there were a few times when I got dragged along to rugby or to help my father build a garage, but I wasn’t too keen.”

Price thought he’d worked out how he would be playing Mostyn until the play was re-cast for the tour.

“There was only two of us from the original production and what was interesting is that we had four lots of new ideas and choices I’d been certain on I now found had changed,” he says.

The company visited a coal mine as preparation for the run – thebig pit museum at Blaenavon, Torfaen, South Wales. “It was interesting because a one point they made everyone turn their headlamps off and you really can’t see a hand in front of your face, so it’s not for the faint-hearted. People were turning on their phones just to see a little light because they were getting claustrophobic. In a theatre full of hundreds of people you don’t necessarily get that sense of total darkness because it does change how you react and feel,” says Price.

It would be easy to think that the six cast members go out for a walk or a run for fresh air after performances.

“We just need a good drink,” he laughs.

Will there be a dry eye in the house when the play end?

“Probably not, no, but that’s not to say it ends badly because for a lot of reasons it ends really well. There is closure and I think that although, at times, it’s sad, you do feel satisfied as an audience that everything that has to be said has been said.”

n Live Theatre, which has scored its own national and international successes with The Pitman Painters and Close the Coalhouse Door, stages Land of Our Fathers until Saturday. For returns ring: 0191-232-1232. Tonight (Thursday, January 28), there is a meet the cast and creative team after the show and after the Saturday matinee (January 30), MP for Wansbeck Ian Lavery, the former president of the NUM joins Live’s artistic director Max Roberts for a discussion about the issues raised in the play.