Dust is a glimpse, a distilled chronicle of the arduous, but also exuberant, lives of Northern English working men. A return to the UK for an elderly aunt’s funeral in Yorkshire brought writer and director, Charlaina Thompson unexpectedly close to her family origins.

In particular, it was the exploits of her grandfather, a miner who was awarded the George Cross for rescuing a fellow worker during a mining accident in 1940, which led her deeper into the archives.

Then, a chance meeting with actor Craig McArdle at an Adelaide Fringe show two years ago revealed parallel family histories. His grandfather had also been a miner, who had narrowly avoided being killed in the Lofthouse Colliery disaster in 1974 which cost seven lives. For two years McArdle recorded his father’s memories of growing up in those times.

For these reasons Dust has, not just a ring of truth, but is suffused with the vividness of first-hand memory. Tracing the life of one young man is both memorably specific and archetypal. It is also elegiac. The narration opens with a death rattle, the choking of ruined lungs filled with lethal dust. This is a man’s life expiring, hostage to industrial mismanagement and cruelty.

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Astutely guided by director Thompson, McArdle’s presentation is remarkable for its wry comedy, nimble physicality, and rapid shifts in focus and mood. From the opening paroxysm, he transforms instantly into a young boxer – fit, full of swagger, and ready to take on the world. It is propelling theatre.

Conscription comes suddenly, a burden falling more heavily on working class men. Barely eighteen, he is on his way to Korea – for a war “fought over a line on the map.” Our man returns alive, but his pal Dave does not. Back in England he gets work as a boilermaker and meets his wife, Dot.

McArdle’s enactment of the courtship has a gentle charm, interspersed with banter, comic impersonations and music hall serenades.

When he loses employment, he has five mouths to feed and the mine beckons as a bleak and dangerous option. These are the grimmest sections of this picaresque narrative. But also leavened by the camaraderie of the workers, and the adherence to the “Northern Ten Commandments” – especially number ten, “Thou shalt not leave anyone behind”.

The account of the lethal inundation of the Lofthouse Colliery mine – when a wall broke through from an adjacent, abandoned Victorian-era excavation – is piteously described. McArdle is also at his best capturing the anger and despair at the failure of later industrial strikes, and then the end days of Thatcher era closures.

Charlaina Thompson and Craig McArdle have retrieved history and dramatised it with economy and conviction. Dust is theatre that restores memory, rescuing it from obliteration.

Dust is playing at The Mill from February 21 – March 7 presented by Yellow Brick Theatre Company