Producer Bill Kenwright is presenting the Live Theatre Newcastle and National Theatre co-production of the play, which is inspired by a book by William Feaver and directed by Max Roberts.

Playwright Hall won the 2009 Tony Award for Best Book for Billy Elliot which he had adapted from his own original screenplay. The Pitmen Painters won the Evening Standard Theatre Award for Best Play.

In 1934, a group of Ashington miners hired a professor to teach an art appreciation evening class. Rapidly abandoning theory in favour of practice, the pitmen began to paint. Within a few years the most avant-garde artists became their friends and their work was acquired by prestigious collections; but every day they worked, as before, down the mine. Examining the lives of a group of ordinary men that do extraordinary things, The Pitmen Painters is described in press materials as a "look at art, class and politics."

The cast features many of the original actors who starred in the original National Theatre and Broadway productions: Christopher Connel, Deka Walmsley, David Whitaker, Brian Lonsdale and Trevor Fox, whoare joined by new cast members David Leonard, Caroline Faber and Viktoria Kay.

The tour will begin performances April 6 at the Theatre Royal, Windsor, for a run through April 16, then continue to Cambridge, Bath, Wolverhampton, Eastbourne, Nottingham, Guildford, Blackpool, Plymouth, Richmond, Darlington, Glasgow, Malvern, Newcastle, Southend, Leeds, Brighton, Tunbridge Wells, Coventry and Bromley.