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Jay Johnson as Yosser, left, Mark Womack as Dixie, George Caple as Chrissie, Jurell Carter as Loggo and Ged McKenna as George. Pictures: Alastair Muir Boys From the Black Stuff Derby Theatre ***** This drama as a television series made an enormous impact upon me as a young man in my early 20s. In my memory it stands out as one of the finest social dramas I have ever seen. Originally written in the late 1970s, but first televised in 1982, it came to encapsulate the despair of the early Thatcher Era. Alan Bleasdale’s original five episodes were just that, episodic and didn’t have a central narrative. James Graham has taken on the daunting task of adapting it for stage and reimagining it for an audience forty years on. He has created a visceral tour de force as powerful as anything I have seen at Derby Theatre in the last decade eclipsing even Brassed off. The totemic figure of the drama is Yosser Hughes, originally played by the late Bernard Hill on television, now on stage by Barry Sloane How do you adapt one of the all time great British TV series of the 80s for the 20s stage? ‘Very respectfully’, is the answer offered by James Graham’s version. A reporter once asked Bleasdale, “Is it a problem that you have never written anything as good as Boys from the Blackstuff ? His response: “Who Has?” James Graham is an excellent choice as adaptor. His script is faithful, respectful, humorous, but kinetic and muscular too. His success with the Gareth Southgate drama Dear England, demonstrated his own credentials at writing popular drama. Rehashing the iconic original series into something coherent and familiar is no easy task.
Reiss Barber as Snowy and Jamie Peacock as Moss Dramatically the play pivots around the shredded masculinity and mental breakdown of Hughes. As our male Liverpudlian labourers endeavour to make a few bob on the sly to keep their head above water during a recession which has drowned their hopes and prospects. Hughes’ deranged and desperate catch phrases of :“Gissa job and “I can do that” still resonate today in an era when automation and artificial intelligence look set to rob a new generation of the dignity of labour. Barry Sloane as Hughes is magnificent who delivers an exhausting portrayal of a man on, then over, the edge. However Hughes now faces a nemesis in Moss (Jamie Peacock), a young DHSS officer determined to make a name for himself. Chancellor Rachel Reeves will love him. Kate Wasserberg’s production is authentic and minimalist with a glowering stark, industrial-style set from Amy Jane Cook. What Wasserberg does incredibly well is to trust the characters. With spellbinding realism, Hughes is the tragic character whom Shakespeare would have been pleased to insert into one of his Tragedies. When Nathan McMullen’s Chrissie, is offered a job which he rejects for ethical reasons – his obstinate refusal to accept it in the face of his desperate wife’s fury and tears is deeply unsettling in a memorable dramatic highlight eclipse only by the slow motion balletic depiction of the Police raid on Hughes’ house. Matthew Bourne would be impressed. On the one hand Boys from the Blackstuff is a period piece with the workforce facing 1970/80s mass unemployment and deindustrialisation. But its relevance is reinvented for 2025 as the Chinese look to wipe out the Scunthorpe steel works and Derby’s Rolls Royce awaits the shattering effects of Trump’s tariffs on sales and jobs. Runs at Derby until sat19th April then continues on nationwide tour. Cancel whatever else you have on and come and see this production. Gary Longden 15-04-25 |
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