Writer Lee Hall showed in Billy Elliot that artistic ambitions and success are not the exclusive preserve of the affluent classes (did anyone seriously suppose they were?). He has gone on to present the same lesson again – in my opinion a shade too didactically – in The Pitmen Painters. This phenomenally successful play was first seen two years ago at Newcastle-upon-Tyne’s Live Theatre before being taken up as a co-production with the National Theatre where it has enjoyed three sell-out runs. It is now out on a brief tour before returning to the NT’s Lyttelton Theatre from December 1. It can be seen at Milton Keynes Theatre until Saturday.

The same team of actors has remained with the production, under director Max Roberts, since the premiere. This unusual circumstance, while it might have threatened staleness in the performances after so long, has on the contrary clearly engendered a team spirit which strongly parallels that enjoyed by the quintet of artists at the centre of the drama.

These belong to the Ashington Group, made up (largely) of miners from the Northumbrian colliery town of that name who came together through a Workers’ Educational Association class begun in 1934 under the inspired tutelage of Robert Lyon (Ian Kelly), later head of the Edinburgh College of Art. The five group members we meet (there were actually more than 30 at the start) are all sharply drawn, but with an exaggeration of their peculiar characteristics in some cases which, while conducive to comedy – one thinks Dad’s Army at times – rather damages the play’s credibility.

Union stalwart and WEA ‘boss’ George Brown (Deka Walmsley) is more slavishly in thrall to the rule book, surely, than any real person would be, while dental technician Harry Wilson (Michael Hodgson) shows a commitment to marxist theory that is unlikely in its severity. If Brian Lonsdale’s Young Lad suggests Warmington-on-Sea’s Private Pike (he even has an ‘uncle’ in George), then David Whitaker’s Jimmy Floyd is too much the Old Dog – see him slaver (whoar!) when nude model Susan (Lisa McGrillis) arrives to everyone else’s prudish (sitcom-like) shock.

The most convincing character is the keen-as- mustard – and clearly highly talented – artist Oliver Kilbourn (the excellent Christopher Connel, pictured). I can pass opinion on his talents, incidentally, because one of the splendid features of this production is that we get to see some of the works produced by the artists projected on to large screens hanging above the stage. It is a thrilling moment indeed when Oliver’s first picture – a linocut of a miner at the coal face – is displayed in all its savage power.

He becomes involved in personal turmoil, and a minor crisis for the group, when he is offered a handsome stipend – rather more than he earns down the pit – by a rich benefactor, the P&O shipping heiress Helen Sutherland (Philippa Wilson), who wants him to become a full-time artist.

And wants more? The suggestion of romance is there. which would have seemed a daft one had Miss Sutherland been presented not as the highly alluring creature depicted here but as the middle-aged lady she really was by the time she met the painters. Oliver might have had serious reservations about the stipend, too, had he known what eventually happened to the one she supplied to Ben Nicholson, who is portrayed in the play most entertainingly by Brian Lonsdale.

Milton Keynes Theatre: Box office tel. 0844 8717652 (www.ambassadortickets.com/ milton keynes). National Theatre: 020 7452 3000 (www.nationaltheatre.org.uk).