It’s certainly easy to see why Boys from the Blackstuff has been adapted for the stage. Alan Bleasdale’s 1982 TV serial made an almighty impact and is still remembered today as a vivid portrait of Liverpool at the time.
But that’s not quite the same as the idea being a good one, a successful one, one that works. If you go in to the stage show with reservations, the chances are you’ll come out with those same reservations intact.
Bleasdale’s creation started out as The Black Stuff, a one-off BBC drama (made in 1978 as a Play for Today, though not broadcast, as a stand-alone piece, until January 1980) about an illegal tarmac gang at work in Middlesbrough. Bleasdale had already written the bulk of the series, a spin-off following the same characters, by the time it was actually commissioned (curiously, then, one of the great Thatcher-era British dramas was mostly down on paper by the time the Tories came to power).
This National Theatre stage version, launched at Liverpool Royal Court and now at The Lowry as part of a UK tour, has been written by the prolific James Graham (whose plays include Ink and Dear England, with TV work such as Quiz and Sherwood).
In promotional material for the show, Graham has described trying to capture Boys from the Blackstuff‘s ‘epic’ quality, and it’s tempting to think he’s barking up the wrong tree. In some respects, for sure, the original has scope, sweep and ambition, but it’s mostly fairly intimate. Shot on gloss-free video rather than film, it shows the Black Stuff characters struggling, disconnected, even broken. It’s anything but an ensemble piece or a spectacle.
The stage version, though, brings the group together as much as possible, only breaking them apart in the second half. There is regular use of amassed singing – folk ballads, hymns – and scene-change music that’s in danger of feeling rousing. The busy set design hints at dockside urban decay, with a large monochrome screen sketching in specific locations.
Image: Alastair Muir
Among the cast, Ged McKenna excels in the pivotal role of George. Perhaps inevitably, the vivid tale of Yosser Hughes often takes precedence. It’s a substantial gift of a role, but here Jay Johnson (recently seen at HOME as Paul McCartney in The Two of Us) makes a very decent fist of charting Yosser’s tribulations. It’s questionable, though, whether Bernard Hill’s iconic look should have been copied so faithfully. Trim out a few Graeme Souness references and a very different approach might have paid dividends.
Some of the other characters tend towards a slightly two-dimensional saminess, which is fatal in the circumstances. The ‘boys’ need to stand out as individuals. The TV version gave every main character their own episode, allowing each to shine. Here, elements from those episodes have been assembled ‘Greatest Hits’ style, but at times this comes at the expense of a character feeling entirely distinct and developed.
There’s also the matter of humour. Bleasdale’s original made brilliant use of comic relief and consequently it boasts some very funny, fondly-remembered lines, but overall it’s by no means a funny piece. It’s often searingly bleak, with only flashes of gallows humour to lighten the despair, This stage version leans into the humour too much, so much so that Yosser’s catchphrase ‘gizza job’ is at times played as farce.
A TV serial is not a stage play, of course. To some extent the latter needs to provide spectacle, even entertainment. In that respect the tone and feel of the Boys from the Blackstuff play is perhaps understandable, but it’s drifted so far away from the source material that it feels as though it’s missing the whole point. The narrative was never really the point: the emphasis was on those characters in those circumstances in that setting, one that’s now been trapped in amber. What’s survived the adaptation process is actually a very different beast entirely.
Main image by Alastair Muir
