Review by Simon Jenner, June 17th 2025
“Gis a job. Go on. Gis it me.” There’s abandonment and hopelessness, as Amy Jane Cook’s single set of cloud-flown derricks looms over Boys From the Blackstuff, in James Graham’s two-and-half hour condensation of Alan Bleasdale’s 1982 TV series.
Arriving at Theatre Royal Brighton till June 21st directed by Kate Wasserberg in association with Liverpool’s Royal Court, it’s a groundbreaking venture. The production then tours. Last year after Liverpool it came to the National Theatre before transferring to the Garrick.
Reiss Barber (Snowy) and Jamie Peacock (Moss). Photo Credit: Alastair Muir..
Bleasdale’s still involved but could hardly have predicted a miracle of theatrical dovetailing, producing one of Graham’s finest theatrical coups towards the end. Though even Graham can’t entirely disguise this originated in a legendary TV series. The first half, seen a second time, seems more episodic; it has to establish characters. Nevertheless, the second with space to breathe, hits home.
Like the original series this adaptation seems prescient too, in this stark recreation which includes the set being plain. It’s less epically wide than at the Olivier say. It’s again deepened by the black-and-white of Jamie Jenkin’s video. Here it’s a storyteller of glittering sea, through Toxteth to Thatcher – singularly in garish colour. Certainly as austerity-as-choice confirmed since the election, we don’t even have George’s hope in a better-governed world.
Despite the governing, or oppressing world using language to crush, what emerges is two levels of resistance – as the former tarmac-layers, who lost their jobs through a dodgy side-deal gone wrong, queue for the dole. Skirling wit and fire-tongued rhodomontade; and with George, his son Snowy, ultimately Chrissie, articulating class-struggle and taking life into their own hands.
This is obscured brilliantly by making the most vocal the most confused character. Yosser, as portrayed by Jay Johnson (taking up Barry Sloane’s 2023-24 mantle), emerges as a howling engine of self-destruction, damaging those around him to act against their own self-interest by sheer willpower. But Yosser flails for identity and agency in a world where his wife’s left him and his perpetually invisible children seem his only distraction: “Maurice, get out of that cement mixer!”
Yosser, a young Lear, but ever slightly knows himself, repeatedly asserting “I can do that” from bricklaying to lollipop-ferrying, gas-men snoopers, milkmen or groundsmen. His one talent, tarmac-laying, isn’t needed. The Shakespearean energies invoked in some comparisons are real.
But Yosser’s children can neither damn or redeem him. Johnson fines down Yosser to a towering whisper, a look, or a sudden, friend-smashing punch. There’s a deft (blink-and-miss) moment illustrating how a year ago Yosser badgered his friends into a disastrous move.
If Johnson’s Yosser is the catalyst, acting on but never changing, never learning, Chrissie (George Caple, previously Snowy and Kevin) is the one acted on. In Caple’s finely understated performance Chrissie’s arc of repeatedly being “too nice” stymies him, exasperates even his wife Angie (Amber Blease in several powerful performances, notably as robotic DHSS Jean, and sharp-tongued Student who calls Yosser “scared”).
But it’s Chrissie’s epiphanic moment at George’s funeral which not only proves the emotional climax, but theatrically conflates the two poles of authority into a meaningless ritual. The service of call-and-response Catholic liturgy maps onto DHSS interrogations we’ve already seen; as at the start the five central characters find sideswiping ad-libs to break out of the hierarchy, avoid the ‘sniffers’ trying to prove they’re moonlighting to work whilst claiming the dole.
Just like the confessional (Yosser tries both churches to comedic effect) the booths the five enter are controlled by clerks, ranged like puppeteers from above. They’re dedicated to smell out secular sin. Finally the Department of (Un)Employment looms as the new cathedral under construction: not only monitoring work, but providing it.
If the oldest character is subsumed into the church it’s Chrissie who provides the secular eulogy for George (Ged McKenna). He’s the most sympathetic and balanced character, emerging as an oracle to counter authority with socialism and a paean to solidarity: the past and a possible future. McKenna anchors each scene he’s in, semaphores George as a frail titan. It’s the more wrenching since he hopes this will continue. Snowy (Reiss Barber) his socialist son scorches an arc of idealist struggle: his fate brings warring factions together.
Put-upon foreman Dixie (Mark Womack, returning to the part) takes all the blame going, cowed by his unenviable role. But he breaks out of this as Womack movingly counsels Dixie’s son Kevin (Kyle Harrison-Pope) to finally escape with his guitar. Neatly, Kevin gets a hitch-sign to Leeds, where a year ago the Student who told him to get a life was headed.
He’s joined in that final hike by Loggo (Jurell Carter) bound – with spectacular optimism – for the Shetlands. Carter – whose speeches soar with the show’s greatest lyricism and flight – might have less to do, but Graham brings in early speeches about his slave-trafficked great-grand-parents alongside George’s historical counterpoint. Famously, there’s a proud tradition of anti-slavery in Liverpool, culminating in the refusal to handle cotton from the American South in 1862, despite the population starving for their actions.
Blease and Sian Polhill-Thomas shine with an energy to stamp a few women characters to push through the male narrative. Polhill-Thomas’s DHSS Miss Sutcliffe proves a wry foil to hapless jobsworth Moss. She’s also Dixie’s wife Margaret who with Blease’s slowly furious Angie, provides the only women’s conversation as they hide from sniffers; and George’s nearly mute wife Freda.
Jamie Peacock was an FOH in Liverpool’s production. Now, as he did at the National, he shines as egregious but confused DHSS zealot Moss. As a Protestant Reverend Peacock’s so unctuous Yosser nearly kills him. Indeed in every other role but Moss (like Milkman) he takes the hits meant for Moss; it seems a running casting-joke.
Sean Kingsley’s even more condemned. His Molloy is worst when wheedling after a death for which he was responsible, and though Yosser’s punches are overly liberal, here they fork lightning. As Dan the Catholic Priest he’s the butt of Yosser’s best quip: “I’m desperate, Dan.” Kingsley’s redeemed as it were as Marley, the thief.
There’s a gallimaufry of ensemble roles: Elliott Kingsley (also security-guard Scotty) and Victoria Oxley both return, with Graham Elwell. Rachael Nanyonjo’s movement makes a ballet of ensemble moments, which provides memorable snatches of a cappella: a necessary unity in a grey-sprawled world. Dyfan Jones’s sound and music is ominous; Ian Scott’s lighting is a bleak slap in the wind.
Graham’s consciously stretched even further from his old political hinterland than he did in Dear England. This consummate adaptation enriches his work as it does homage to Bleasdale’s vision.
Liverpool’s Royal Court under Kevin Fearon, as the work’s original producers and commissioners, have (with the NT) caused something huge to transfer here: the city’s character overarches this production with scudding images and a grey dwarfing presence. It’s shrunk in the Brighton space but carries the salty tang of one sea to another. Over 40 years on, nothing in it dates. It’s more prophesy than history in this stunning production.
Set and Costume Designer Amy Jane Cook, Lighting Design Ian Scott, Movement Director Rachael Nanyonjo, Associate Director Tim Welton, Associate Movement Director Jess Ellen Knight, Composer and Sound Designer Dyfan Jones, Audio Visual Designer Jamie Jenkin, Fight Director Rachel Bown-Williams for RC-Annie Ltd.
Jay Johnson as Yosser Hughes and 2025 Cast. Photo Credit: Alastair Muir
