Theatre review: Boys from the Blackstuff

Alan Bleasdale's Boys from the Blackstuff has become the stuff of legend, so even though I've never seen it - even if I'd been living in the UK at the time, I'd have been seven when the original TV series aired in 1982 - there's many iconic images and catchphrases from the show I'm familiar with. An early and influential critique of Thatcher's Britain, I won't go into the reasons a story about the unemployed being both left without a safety net and blamed for their predicament seems ripe to revisit today - we'd be here all night. I guess if you want to tell a story about men who just want to work there's some logic to getting an officially diagnosed workaholic to do it, so James Graham is on adaptation duties for Kate Wasserberg's production, which debuted at Liverpool's Royal Court before this brief run at the National, with a West End run coming next due to high demand.

Bleasdale's Liverpool is a particularly desolate place, even by the high unemployment figures and unrest of the time: The docks that were the city's lifeblood have lost most of their traffic to other ports. In fact the central group of men had been in a much more secure profession as roadbuilders, laying tarmac - the titular blackstuff.

But when Chrissie (Nathan McMullen) agreed to take on a dodgy side job in Middlesbrough, it lost him, Loggo (Aron Julius,) George (Philip Whitchurch) and Dixie (Mark Womack) their jobs and their savings as well. Back in Liverpool they have to take on cash-in-hand building jobs, while officers from the unemployment office - the only business in town to be thriving - investigate them for benefit fraud. When an overenthusiastic dole officer's (Jamie Peacock) clumsy raid on a building site results in the death of George's son Snowy (George Caple,) it looks like the only people to face consequences will be the workers.

I said I wouldn't labour the topical political relevance but another thing that makes Boys from the Blackstuff ripe for revival is the discussions around men's mental health. Bleasdale's story frames this largely around the expectations of men as breadwinners and providers, and how stripping them of this also strips them of their identity and dignity. Nowhere is the damage this does more bluntly shown than in the show's most famous figure, Yosser Hughes (Barry Sloane.) Having also been left by his wife, he roams Liverpool alternately shouting at his unseen children to stop climbing into cement mixers, demanding that people give up their jobs to him, or just headbutting anyone who winds him up the wrong way.

It's no surprise that Yosser has become what most people remember about the original series as he's the perfect embodiment of Bleasdale's tragicomedy, and Sloane successfully makes him equal parts charismatic, frightening, hilarious and pitiful. If he's the diseased heart of the story then Whitchurch's George is the soul, the last old-school Socialist who serves as agony uncle to the men, but is slowly dying of an unspecified illness.

Graham seizes on the idea of spirituality in a city with two cathedrals, one Catholic, one Anglican, but where the residents feel they've been abandoned by all higher powers both secular and religious. Amy Jane Cook's designs and Jamie Jenkin's video on the other hand focus on the industrial to provide the atmosphere and suggest the way the city's lost heyday as a busy dock is what everyone's really praying to and for: The stage is framed by the cranes and containers of the docks that still dominate the skyline, but no longer provide the city with its purpose.

Although this is very much the men's story there are moments for the women to shine, with Lauren O’Neil as Chrissie's wife Angie getting to show the perspective of how this collective emasculation affects everyone else in the city, and Helen Carter's inscrutable Miss Sutcliffe taking on a puppet-master role at the dole office. This very short run at the National was presumably just to test the waters for the upcoming West End transfer, and given how quickly that was announced long before it opened at the Olivier the combination of an iconic title and the hitmaker James Graham as adaptor has obviously attracted the expected crowds; that combination has also come up with as powerful but funny a show as those crowds have been hoping for.

Boys from the Blackstuff by James Graham, based on the TV series by Alan Bleasdale, is booking until the 8th of June at the National Theatre's Olivier; then from the 13th of June to the 3rd of August at the Garrick Theatre.

Running time: 2 hours 35 minutes including interval.

Photo credit: Andrew AB Photography.