Boys from the Blackstuff – Richmond Theatre, London

Writer: James Graham

Director: Kate Wasserberg

“That’s all that’s left here, ruins,” It may be Liverpool in 1982 but James Graham’s adaptation of Boys from the Blackstuff has just as much to say about the disenfranchisement and economic decline of post-industrial communities today. Following its premiere at Liverpool Royal Court in 2023 and a transfer to the National and Garrick Theatres last year, this new touring production brings Alan Bleasdale’s urban tragedy to around 20 venues over six months, stopping at Richmond Theatre for five performances. Emphasising the camaraderie among its leads – Chrisse, Loggo, Dixie, George and Yosser Huges – Kate Wasserberg’s show retains its haunted and haunting quality.

Laid off from their role as tarmac layers, five colleagues desperate for work are regularly called to the Dole Office to answer for themselves. Struggling to survive, the men are offered cash-in-hand work at a building site but when the “sniffers” discover them cheating the system, disaster strikes. But with no opportunities left, each man sinks deeper into despair.

Making its way to a number of smaller stages on tour, the intimacy of the character connections and the deep-rooted effects of economic decline come to the fore. Still a state-of-the-nation piece that emphasises the scale and tragedy of lives affected by political changes of the early 1980s, the consequences for this community, of inter-generational inheritance, of the effect on both professional and masculine pride are more clearly surfaced. Graham has taken Bleasdale’s anthology series and merges the five perspectives together, spreading the impact perhaps but creating an ensemble perspective of a district and city in despair.

And it still casts a spell, particularly in the more character-driven second half where the impact of years of struggle against an impenetrable system and the feeling of being at the end of the line more fully emerges. As each personal story reaches its climax, the combined effect of Graham and Bleasdale’s work carves out this generation of lost men, all somehow dislocated from the world around them and the better people they hope to be. The smaller staging – almost all taking place at a single level now – contrasts that with the crumbling history of Liverpool where the elegiac songs that the men sing together seem already to belong to another time, echoes of a place long submerged in memory of hardship where hope is all but gone.

Richmond Theatre is only the second stop on the tour and there are creaky moments – the visibility of the stagehands and cast needed to move furniture feels more disruptive in the smaller space, but may get slicker with time. as will some of the performances which are still settling with most of the cast playing multiple roles. The production retains both Mark Womack as Dixie who brings considerable gravitas and Jamie Peacock as Dole Officer Moss. Among those joining the cast, Ged McKenna’s George makes the biggest impact as the beloved community elder devastated by the life he sees closing behind him while Jay Johnson’s Yosser Huges is still a little mannered, but it is by no means easy to follow Barry Sloane’s quite remarkable original performance, and Johnson will find his own way with it.

Boys from the Blackstuff is a piece about men (and women) who want to be seen, people losing their identity in the closing down of their lives and the powerlessness that state intervention created. “Unemployment is a growing industry”, the Dole Office team brag, but living in the ruins of the industries and lives that once thrived in Liverpool, has anything really changed?

Runs until 15 February (and continues to tour until 5 July)