In 1982, Alan Bleasdale’s TV series Boys from the Blackstuff, about unemployed Liverpudlian road-workers, distilled the Thatcherite evisceration of regional communities and working practices. Today, James Graham’s stage adaptation feels simultaneously like an awesome period piece – as grand and remote as a diplodocus – and oddly current in its depiction of a rich nation blighted by desperation and penury.
Kate Wasserberg’s production originated at Liverpool’s Royal Court and is briefly at the National before a transfer to the West End’s Garrick Theatre, which feels like an example of frictionless mobility that didn’t exist in 1982, and is still rare now.
