Boys from the Blackstuff
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 of Alan Bleasdale’s ‘Boys from the Blackstuff’. The prolific playwright was seen at the NT just last year with his supremely enjoyable Gareth Southgate drama ‘Dear England’, which was Graham writ large: the writer humorously but deftly synthesising vast amounts of data, facts and characters into one kinetic narrative. ‘Boys from the Blackstuff’ does not feel like a James Graham play. It feels an awful lot like Bleasdale’s landmark 1982 TV drama – even if the execution of the story is often relatively different, the same plot but chopped up, reformatted, at times made a splash more PC. Certainly it’s testimony to Graham’s skill at keeping multiple narrative balls in the air. Let’s assume you haven’t seen the TV show (you can stream it for free on iPlayer FYI). ‘Boys from the Blackstuff’ concerns the titular group of male Liverpudlian labourers, who as the play begins have already lost their jobs laying tarmac (‘the blackstuff’) due to their ill-advised pursuit of an illicit side-project. The ‘boys’ are now on the dole, unable to find legitimate work, though they are all proud men and desperate to get back to employment. Indeed, the show spawned a catchphrase to that effect – in the words of the clearly somewhat unhinged Yosser Hughes (played by the late Bernard Hill on TV and Barry Sloane here): ‘gissa job’. They hav
