“It is a work of fiction… ” A recorded voice fills the auditorium as the house lights go down. Damian Green, the then work and pensions secretary, speaking in the House of Commons in 2016, is challenging the representation of the benefits system in I, Daniel Blake, the award-winning film, released that year, by Paul Laverty (writer) and Ken Loach (director). Green has only seen trailers for the film.
Playwright Dave Johns, who played Daniel on screen, punctuates his new stage adaptation with projections of social media posts from government ministers, pronouncing on matters that motor the action: austerity, food banks, child poverty. We, the audience, are free to decide which feels more like fiction: the drama before us or the politicians’ tweets.
By contrast, the characters on the stage have next to no freedom of choice as they attempt to manoeuvre through the “benefits” system. Rhys Jarman’s set of metal shelving units, repositioned for scene changes, echoes the feel of puzzle-box chambers used in experiments on rat behaviour. Daniel has had a major heart attack; his doctor has forbidden him to work. However, after a “capability for work” Q&A session he is deemed fit for employment. At the jobcentre, Daniel encounters Katie and her daughter, Daisy, newly arrived in Newcastle on the night bus from London and sanctioned for lateness: “No money for a month!”
In a sharp first act, the plight of these three is conveyed touchingly and harrowingly in tightly focused performances from David Nellist, Bryony Corrigan (Katie) and Jodie Wild. The writing in the second act is less successful, more demonstrative than dramatic. Throughout, what is chilling is the all too human representation, by Janine Leigh and Micky Cochrane (under Mark Calvert’s precise direction), of the bored, exasperated jobcentre staff. Required to ensure that “clients” are fitted to pre-set templates, their choices, too, are limited. If I, Daniel Blake is a fiction, it nonetheless highlights the realities of an inflexible system that does not recognise individual needs, nor allow space for compassion.
