Review: Boys from the Blackstuff at the Liverpool Empire ****

In the early 80s, Alan Bleasdale was a member of the Liverpool Playhouse’s ‘Gang of Four’ – the quartet who nurtured writers and new work at the Williamson Square theatre.

Another of the gang’s number was Willy Russell, whose Blood Brothers was premiered there in 1983, went on to West End success and returned to the city the following year to play the much bigger Empire. Last week the musical made the latest of many, many return visits to the Lime Street theatre, all of which (apart from that first tour) have come from Bill Kenwright Ltd.

And lo, hot on the heels of the Johnstone twins comes Bleasdale’s Boys from the Blackstuff – the play, from the pen of James Graham, which began life 18-months-ago down the road at the Royal Court, transferred to London to much acclaim and is now back in its ‘birth’ city on tour courtesy of…Bill Kenwright Ltd.

Kenwright would surely have loved that just as much as he always enjoyed returning with Russell’s (ultimately) tragic tale.

Bleasdale’s Playhouse tenure coincided with what were dark days for a city where there were almost 100,000 out of work and just 2,000 vacancies in the job centres, reflected in the powerful small screen drama which in 1982 introduced the British viewing public to Dixie, Chrissie, George, Loggo and of course, to Yosser Hughes.

Four decades on, many of the themes in Bleasdale’s story – masterfully retold on stage by playwright-of-the-moment Graham – still resonate, among them the sense of powerlessness, the strains of financial hardship, and the need to talk about masculinity and male mental health. Meanwhile with AI the latest threat to the human workforce, there’s a new but similarly simmering sense of helplessness and vulnerability lurking just below the surface.

Above: Yosser, Dixie, Chrissie, Loggo and George. Top: Loggo (Jurell Carter), Yosser (Jay Johnson) and Dixie (Mark Womack) in Boys from the Blackstuff. Photos by Alastair Muir.

This is the third Liverpool run for Blackstuff in less than two years, albeit in a different theatre and with a (mostly) different cast.

So how does it shape up in the augmented environs of the Empire?

Amy Jane Cook’s semi-derelict dock set, with its corrugated iron hoardings and nodding cranes, has real impact on the theatre’s capacious stage – as does Jamie Jenkin’s video design which provides both a vivid and at times visually poetic backdrop to proceedings.

Meanwhile movement director Rachael Nanyonjo’s dance-like choreography which, coupled with the augmented cast (14 including ensemble), helps to make the space feel populated.

Elsewhere though, notably after the interval when the individual ‘boys’’ stories unfold and unravel, the action feels rather muted; to me it lacks some of the vigour and drive which underscored the original production. There were also some initial sound issues on opening night, quickly resolved, which left the dole queue role call sounding rather echoey.

What is happily just as compelling as its previous iterations is the power in the storytelling and the essential comradeship, albeit at times fractious, between the central characters.

Above: Ms Sutcliffe (Sian Polhill-Thomas) and 'sniffer' Moss (Jamie Peacock). Photo by Alastair Muir.

Mark Womack is the quintet’s sole survivor from previous productions – his reserved family man Dixie trying his best to keep treading the straight and narrow, even if it’s in boots that have ‘fallen off the back of a boat’, while Ged McKenna impresses as elder statesman George Malone and LIPA alumnus Jurell Carter essays an easy charm as Loggo, the fishing philosopher who eventually opts to cast his net beyond the Mersey.

George Caple, who originally played Snowy, returns but this time as the conflicted Chrissie which gives him the opportunity to really stretch his acting muscles, particularly in his scenes with disenchanted wife Angie (Amber Blease) and also with McKenna’s ailing George.

Meanwhile comparisons, as the saying goes, are odious – but human nature makes them inevitable, particularly when a character has transcended its surroundings to become part of the cultural fabric as in the case of Yosser Hughes, a tragi-comic figure of Shakespearean dimensions.

The late Bernard Hill’s shoes remain big ones to fill. Barry Sloane, who inhabited (and I use the world deliberately) the character at the Royal Court and National Theatre had the same sort of physical presence, along with his way of internalising Hughes’ burning anguish which was particularly disquieting. Like a bomb that could explode at any time.

Above: Jay Johnson as Yosser Hughes. Photo by Alastair Muir.

Jay Johnson, sensibly, doesn’t try to emulate either one. A slighter figure, his Hughes has a terrier-like energy, bordering on the manic, as he paces the stage, shoulders hunched, in Zapata moustache and long black coat.

Yosser is much more than an extravagant muzzie and a quotable catchphrase, and while physically less imposing than Hill/Sloane, Johnson certainly captures the emotional heart of a sensitive (albeit somewhat delusional) man, one lashing out as he finds himself dehumanised by a system, and emasculated by circumstances, that he can’t control.

“All my life I wanted to be someone,” Yosser says at one point. “I want to be noticed – I want to be seen, because I’m a human being and I’m here now, I’m alive.”

Among the supporting cast, Sian Polhill-Thomas finds the layers in Ms Sutcliffe, who runs the Department of Employment’s team of ‘sniffers’ – including Jamie Peacock’s nakedly ambitious Moss – with a sardonic tongue but also a vein of compassion.

In a week where even more welfare cuts have been announced, and there's the potential knock-on effect of increased financial liabilities for employers just around the corner, along with a hike in household bills, it seems Boys from the Blackstuff remains a play for today as much as a blast from the past.