Award-winning director Ken Loach and writer Paul Laverty were in the audience at Northern Stage on Wednesday night for the Newcastle premiere of the first stage adaptation of his film I, Daniel Blake.
It is seven years since the hard-hitting film came out and made an enormous impact with its stark portrayal of an ordinary man's struggles to cope with an inhuman benefits system. The drama, the first made by the director in Newcastle, struck a universal chord - and unsettled the powers that be - with its story of a joiner, caught up in endless red tape when a heart attack forces him to apply for benefits, and his friendship with a single mother in similar dire straits who has a meltdown moment at a food bank in a stand-out scene from the film.
It connected not just with others in a similar position in the region but everywhere and it earned Loach his usual heap of praise - and share of criticism from across the political divide - as well as the Bafta of outstanding British fim and the coveted Palme d'Or at Cannes Film Festival the following year.
