Although it fits less comfortably in the larger space of the Lyttelton than the intimate Cottesloe, where it had a sensational London premiere last year, The Pitmen Painters still comes across as a glorious, instant classic of early 21st-century theatre. Winner of the 2008 Evening Standard Award for best new play, it is at once amusing, tragic and revelatory, drawing class, politics and art into combative relationship.

Inspired by William Feaver’s true-life book of the same name, Lee Hall’s play challenges the elitist notion that painting and cultural pursuits are no business of the working classes.

It is initially set in a miners’ hut in Ashington in 1934, where Ian Kelly’s idealist academic, Robert Lyon, arrives to launch a workers’ education class on art appreciation and meets a blank wall of indifference from a nice assortment of miners, including Christopher Connel’s fine, sad Kilbourn. When Lyon encourages the men to try their amateur hands at painting, both he and they are thrilled by their natural talents.

Max Roberts’s superlatively acted production projects the miners’ invaluable pictures on stage. And Roberts conveys the satirical comedy of the men’s encounter with academics, patrons and gentlemen artists once they find fame. After the war, when the group dissolves and Labour falls from power, The Pitmen Painters becomes a poignant lament for the passing of socialism and the pioneering spirit that made artists of miners.
In rep from today until 14 April.
020 7452 3000, www.national theatre.org.uk.