IN Brassed Off, this month's repertory production at York Theatre Royal, mines are closing and mining communities are breaking down on the Yorkshire coal field in 1994.

Richard Cameron's lyrical, intense tragicomedy The Glee Club also combines a Yorkshire pit village setting with music.

Here the year is 1962, and if the mining industry is stable, with jobs aplenty, post-austerity Britain is on the cusp of Swinging Sixties' change in the fields of sexual and social mores and musical tastes.

Whereas the band plays on in Brassed Off, the musicians in The Glee Club are riven by differing attitudes to the disclosure of a secret: their disharmony exposing a community's frailties, prejudices and fears. The Glee Club are an all-male singing troupe in red jackets and bow ties on the working men's club circuit, comprising five miners and their musical director, mining engineer and local church organist Phil. The daily grind makes way for evening singing and pint-supping sessions, but the banter and male camaraderie is jolted by allegations surrounding the improper conduct of pianist Phil (Stefan Bednarczyk). He suffers a "pit accident", the victim of homophobia, as red jackets make way for red-blooded prejudice.

Mike Burns's garrulous, weak Walt sits on the fence; James Hornsby's stolid union rep Jack falls out with Colin Tarrant's volatile Bant; and the latent bigotry of Steve Garti's previously joshing Scobie suddenly bursts like a boil. The one young hand, Oliver Jackson's Colin, has his innocence and hopes of being the next Billy Fury brutally curtailed.

Playwright Cameron combines kitchen-sink grit with earthy, wry humour. The songs, meanwhile, have both polish and spit, the sweetly tender re-workings of Mario Lanza rubbing shoulders with salty pastiches in praise of self-stimulation. Bertolt Brecht would surely have approved.

Box office: 0113 213 7700.

Updated: 10:43 Tuesday, September 14, 2004