Boys From the Blackstuff regularly appears on lists of the greatest TV shows ever. Now it's on stage.
Yosser Hughes, played by Bernard Hill, was one of the most memorable characters in 1982's Boys From The BlackstuffIt regularly appears on lists of the greatest TV dramas ever - now Boys From the Blackstuff is having its stage premiere in Liverpool. Can the unflinching story of unemployment speak to us in 2023?
Yosser Hughes was one of the characters who struggled - and in Yosser's case, often failed - to keep their heads above water amid Liverpool's rampant unemployment and industrial decay in Boys From the Blackstuff. The moustache is a recent addition to rehearsals. "I feel like his cockiness jumped up a notch today with the moustache," director Kate Wasserberg tells the actor. "It was really good. The moustache of power."Sloane is in the cast with Mark Womack, Nathan McMullen, Aron Julius and Andrew Schofield
Boys from the Blackstuff followed five men who worked on a tarmac crew before returning to their home city to discover there were no jobs - except illicit cash-in-hand ones that got them in trouble with a cruel benefits system.Yosser was the most extreme of the five, apparently having been driven to the brink of sanity. Bleasdale has spoken about basing him on a real man who once walked into a cafe and ordered six plates of poached eggs before proceeding to headbutt each one in turn.
Writer James Graham, known for TV dramas Sherwood, Quiz and Brexit: The Uncivil War, plus plays about Gareth Southgate and Rupert Murdoch, has adapted the series for Liverpool's Royal Court theatre, in collaboration with Bleasdale himself. Like the TV show, the stage play is set in the early 80s. While the city has changed in many ways, Graham believes the story is "depressingly relevant 40 years on".
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