Sometimes as an actor you have to make sacrifices for your art, something Billy Elliot actor Trevor Fox was only too happy to do in exchange for a part in The Pitmen Painters. Chris Price found out why.

As a member of the original London cast of Billy Elliot The Musical, Trevor Fox appeared crazy to be walking away for a part as a mere understudy in The Pitmen Painters.

The Geordie actor had enjoyed two stints as George the boxing coach in the West End production of the musical at the Victoria Palace Theatre .

Yet when he went to see The Pitmen Painters on its sell out run at London’s Royal National Theatre, his priorities dramatically changed. So he made a plea to the play’s writer – his long-time friend Lee Hall, the writer of the 2000 film Billy Elliot and the musical.

“I was blown away by it,” recalled Trevor, 46, who has never lost his broad North East accent.

“I thought it was the most amazing piece of theatre. I was completely knocked out by it. It was my story. It said everything I wanted it to say about politics and life.

“I said to Lee, I have got to be connected with it, I’ll even be an understudy, which he laughed at.”

The play, a study of aspiration, follows the birth of the Ashington Group, a small society of artists from Ashington in Northumberland, made up of miners with no artistic training but lots of untapped talent. The group allowed the local mining community to broaden their horizons during its existence from 1934 to 1984.

“Everyone thought I was mad to leave a main part to be an understudy” said Trevor, who also played the part of the village policeman PC Jeff Peverly in the film Billy Elliot.

“I was a working class lad from the north. A generation before, I wouldn’t have been able to go into acting. These were a group of guys who worked down the colliery and, after work, went home, put on their best suits and went to a hall to sit and learn about politics, history, literature and culture.

“One week they couldn’t get anyone to come and talk about economics so, at the last minute, they employed an artist to tell them about art. The artist realised they were so argumentative that they wouldn’t listen so he told them to paint their own pictures.

“The next week they brought in the paintings they had done and the artist was blown away because they were so good. From that small beginning an art society was born that would run for 50 years.”

The play was so successful it earned itself a Broadway run from September 2010, which resulted in Trevor getting a call from Lee. If he could cover all five parts as an understudy there was a chance he could go to Broadway. He accepted the offer and understudied until an actor dropped out and the character of Oliver Kilbourn became available. Now Trevor is part of a UK tour which stops off at Tunbridge Wells and Bromley.

Trevor said: “It is very serious and deals with serious issues like who has the right to art – who has the right to call themselves an artist? Do you have to move to London or can it exist in a working class community?

“Yet this is also an entertaining, funny and emotional play. You don’t notice as an audience the outer lining and that is what theatre should be about.

“Sometimes you can go to the theatre and it’s boring which has led to people to treat the theatre like going to the dentist. This play goes towards getting people to want to go to the theatre. People really get something out of it.”

The Pitmen Painters comes to Tunbridge Wells’ Assembly Hall Theatre from Monday, September 5, to Saturday, September 10. It is then at Bromley’s Churchill Theatre from Monday, September 19 to Saturday, September 24.