Based on the Bafta-award winning series, Boys From The Blackstuff’s gallows humour memorialises a bleak period in British history
“Gi’us a job!”. Viewers of Alan Bleasdale’s original series will be familiar with the catchphrase of Yosser Hughes, repeated ad absurdum to everyone from bricklayers to lollypop ladies to shrinks. A pugnacious, slightly unstable labourer now stuck on the dole and desperate to keep his kids, Yosser’s character, difficult and flawed as he may be, instantly resonates as a symbol of a desperate man.
When it was first released as a series in 1982, Boys From the Blackstuff was almost unbearably prescient. At the time, 3 million Britons were out of work, as manufacturing industries around the country shuddered to a halt. Nowadays it plays more like a period piece, but James Graham’s adaption captures the human fallout of an era of seismic shifts, both economically and culturally. As Britain moved from an era of post-war collectivism to Thatcherite neo-liberalism and individualism, the detritus – that is, hardworking people with families who found themselves sacrificed to free hand of the market – were left to fend for themselves.
The story centres around six men, Chrissie, Yosser, Loggo, Dixie, Snowy, and George, all jobbing tarmac labourers now out of work and struggling to keep their heads above water. They deal with the constant pressure bearing down on them with masculine brusqueness, cutting jabs and withering sarcasm masking the deep-seated anxiety that they feel. Employment office scenes are played for laughs, as the men grow increasingly frustrated with the endlessly repetitive interviews in the place of real help. Upstart benefits fraud investigator Moss and his hawkish overseer Ms. Lawton, acted with charismatic unlikability by Sian Polhill-Thomas, are satirical and faintly ridiculous, seeming to care more about their own job performance than the people they’re meant to assist. Discussing Moss’s future with the service, Ms. Lawton proclaims, “Unemployment is a growth industry!”.
Gyro money doesn’t pay the bills, and so the men are forced to surreptitiously take cash in hand jobs, working on dodgy building sites and overnight shifts at the docks for a fraction of their labour’s worth. The play deftly explores the trap of illegal labour – caught between exploitative bosses and suspicious benefits fraud investigators, the men are doubly powerless. The sentiment often repeated in various guises is their desperation for honest work. But with nobody hiring, they are stuck in a knife-edge existence. As one man says, “I want to be clean. I want to be good. But it’s like they won’t let me.”
The most compelling character is Yosser, superbly acted by Jay Johnson. At first seeming almost like a violent clown, he vibrates with madcap energy as he thunders from jobsite to jobsite demanding work, kids in tow. As the play goes on, layers of his persona are peeled away, revealing a tragic portrait of a man with thwarted ambitions, crumbling as the walls slowly close in. Chrissie, played by George Caple, is Yosser’s foil. An animal-loving family man who is often derogatorily called “too nice”, he avoids conflict even in the face of blatant injustice, keeping his head down in the hopes that one day he will find stable work again.
About midway through the play, I began to worry that the storyline was going in too many different directions. Heavy plot points which felt like they could’ve been plays unto themselves seemed to arise and disappear in flashes, and I sometimes felt like I was watching something in fast-forward. I suspect this is the result of trying to condense a 6-episode series into a 2-hour play; there’s a lot to pack in, and not enough time to explore the gravity of every situation. In some ways, the constant piling on of events puts the audience in the same position as the central characters, reeling from one high-pressure situation to another with barely any time to process the weight of what’s just happened. Despite the business of the narrative, however, in the end nothing feels underdeveloped, and the play ties itself off beautifully.
Boys From the Blackstuff is playing until February 8. Tickets £19.50.
