Theatre Review - Boys from the Blackstuff

Liam Tobin, Barry Sloane and Aron Julius in Boys from the Blackstuff














ALAN Bleasdale’s The Black Stuff originally aired in 1980 as a BBC Play for Today. It featured a group of Liverpudlian Tarmac layers (the titular black stuff) on a job near Middlesbrough.

Bleasdale’s sequel, Boys from the Blackstuff, burst onto our TV screens in 1982 as a five-part series, and followed the misfortunes of five men, now on the dole, and their families.

Set in Liverpool it depicted the effects of mass unemployment in Britain. James Graham’s adaptation premiered at Liverpool’s Royal Court last year, under Kevin Fearon, before travelling south.

Chrissie (Nathan McMullen), Loggo (Aron Julius), George (Philip Whitchurch), Dixie (Mark Womack) and Yosser (Barry Sloane) are used to working hard and providing for their families. But without regular employment, they become increasingly desperate.

They try to make ends meet by taking on casual labour while signing on. But the dole office send out spies (“sniffers”’) into their midst. One raid, led by Moss (Jamie Peacock), results in the tragic death of Snowy (George Caple) who falls from a building while evading their clutches.

Kate Wasserberg’s evocative production is uniformly well-acted. Sloane gives a towering performance as Yosser Hughes (originally played by the late Bernard Hill), known for his refrain “gizza job” and insistent “I could do that”, and McMullen is equally good as the conflicted, less febrile Chrissie.

Amy Jane Cook’s set design of crates, girders and cranes works beautifully with Jamie Jenkin’s evocative video projection.

The play’s resonance is clear. The drama focuses on men and masculinity, their despair and resilience and my only caveat is that the female characters are sketchily drawn in comparison.

Nevertheless, it’s hard not to be moved by this portrait of poverty and unemployment during the early Thatcher years.

Olivier Theatre until June 8

Garrick Theatre June 13-August 3

boysfromtheblackstuff.com/


Originally published by Westminster Extra