(Banner image by David Jones from Isle of Wight, United Kingdom – Support the Miners at London Pride 2015.)

It is now, amazingly, twelve years since the release of the 2014 film “Pride”, “based on the real-life story” of Lesbians & Gays Support the Miners (LGSM). Now the same creative team behind the film, writer Stephen Beresford writing and director Matthew Warchus, have reforged the story as a live theatre musical.

The new show, in the relatively intimate Dorfman Theatre, part of the National Theatre, has opened to five-star reviews. It is sold out for its entire run through to September, although you may be lucky enough, as I was, to find one or two return tickets through the website or in the “Friday Rush” release of extra seats.

True to form, the National Theatre puts on a fabulous show. “Glorious, heartbreaking” (FT); “joy-filled” (The Guardian). The acting is phenomenal, especially Samuel Barnett as Jonathan, whose soliloquy at the start of the second part leads into a show-stopping song-and-dance routine (with costume changes) and perhaps the only really memorable original song, “You Might As Well Live”, about Jonathan’s (true to life) HIV diagnosis. The moment when the women sing “Bread and Roses” is just as spine-tinglingly, hair-on-end-standingly, tear-inducingly moving as in the film, and it is a joy to hear Bronski Beat on the sound system by way of overture and “For a Friend” played, without unnecessary explanation, as the audience leave.

And yet: reading the programme notes, there are quotes from Lord Chris Smith, Sir Chris Bryant, Lord Michael Cashman, Dame Angela Eagle, Baroness Lynne Featherstone, the Rt Hon Nigel Adams, and Baron Parkinson of Whitley Bay. In contrast to these establishment figures, in 1984 the miners were the “enemy within”; there is only one quote in the programme from a member of the mining community, former MP and Dulais Miners’ Support Group organiser Siân James.

The strikers were besieged by the government of the day, the police, and the judges, and the powerful. The show doesn’t ignore these challenges: it raises the almost total media antagonism; it raises the terrible hardship of the striking miners; it raises their inevitable defeat, from which the working class has never recovered; it raises the societal homophobia of the 1980s; and it raises HIV. But this is a fundamentally feel-good show. Those who were too young to be there can believe that they would have been on the right side; those, like me, who were too busy, or too lazy, dealing with personal difficulties, can only regret the missed opportunities.

As in the film – as in any dramatic adaptation – there are plot devices which do not exactly match real-life events. Crucially, these have the acceptance of the actual people concerned. “Jonathan” is put into a relationship with “Gethin”, neither of whom is perfectly analogous with their real-life counterparts. Gethin’s mother was not, in reality, homophobic and he did not have to leave Wales because of it, but there was real homophobia in 1980’s Britain. Semi-fictional Gethin’s reconciliation with his mother is a neat way to tell that other story, as well as a very moving scene in both the film and on stage.

There are other sub-plots which, as far as I have been able to discover (forgive me if I am mistaken), are pure invention. There was reticence and opposition to lesbian and gay involvement by some in the mining community, but there was not a mass-meeting at which LGSM were expelled from the support group; LGSM was not rejected by dozens of other strikers’ support groups before finding the group in Dulais. The other story that could have been told is of LGBT people in the valleys who finally felt supported and able to be open – only briefly shown by the true story of Cliff, an older member of the NUM branch.

Much is made about how LGSM brought together outwardly very different groups; the supposedly traditional miners’ communities contrasting with London-based, liberated lesbians and gays. In reality, most of the activists in LGSM were working class, often from those very same communities. Whatever their backgrounds, almost all were socialists, and felt immediate affinity with the struggles of the miners. Both communities recognised the common enemy in Thatcherism and the devastation that it was bringing, and which its legacy continues to bring. Privatisation and the weakening of organised labour have now destroyed the basic fabric of society, unquestioned by the great and good who gush so enthusiastically about Pride: The Musical.

Unlike the film, the new show includes a black (fictional) character, but only one; stereotypically, he is physically attractive, athletic, and a great dancer. The small number of lesbians in the film is reduced to only one on stage – to be fair, many women left LGSM to form Lesbians Against Pit Closures, but these are invisible in the play and get a very tiny mention in the film.

Pride: The Musical tries hard, perhaps too hard, to play on our heart-strings. I was discussing the film version with friends recently, and we agreed that it inspired us not only emotionally but also as a call to action. I might have been in a small minority in the audience, but I did not feel the same about the stage version, despite the music and the exuberant choreography. I cannot imagine anyone being motivated to get politically involved from seeing it.

Yet political engagement is even more urgent today. In 1984, gay sex was only partially decriminalised and still illegal under the age of 21. Gays The Word bookshop and The Bell pub had been raided by the Police. Later that decade, we had Clause 28, the dreadful AIDS “Don’t Die from Ignorance” advertisements, and the Chief Constable of Manchester, James Anderton, who believed that gay people were “swirling around in a cesspit of their own making.” Those LGSM activists had every reason to be nervous as they entered the Onllwyn Miners’ Welfare Hall. They received a standing ovation rather than brickbats, but elsewhere, in Tory middle England, homophobia was rife.

We live in very different times, but homophobia has not gone away. A far-right government is a real threat – already a large number of local authorities are under right-wing control. At around the same time as Pride: The Musical has been wowing audiences in the cosy Dorfman Theatre, a Russel T Davies drama, Tip Toe, has been showing on Channel 4. That series ends with the murder of a gay man by a lynch mob. It is a warning of what could be in store if we do not resist.

Pride; if it means anything, it means standing together, with many diverse voices, in one front – the slogan of the London Pride parade this year. That unity is necessary, but not sufficient. Enjoy the show, but do not mistake its warm fuzziness for reality.