Gissa Ticket For Boys From The Blackstuff
With any play about the working-class there will be an Us and Them narrative and in James Graham’s version of Alan Bleasdale’s Boys From The Blackstuff it is the ‘sniffers’ from the Dole Office – who literally talk down to the out of work – sent to spy and arrest any unemployed people trying to put food on the table by doing cash-in-hand jobs, writes Michael Holland.
Those that took this kind of work became not only the enemy of the State but also their fellow jobseekers who blamed them for their cheap labour driving down wages and for taking a vacancy that could have been a legal job for someone. But if the table needs food put upon it then needs must… Chrissie (Nathan McMullen) exclaims, ‘I need money not an ideology.’
This is 1982, there are riots, manufacturing is in decline, unemployment was almost as its 1980s’ peak and Thatcher was out to get the unions; Liverpool’s staunch Socialist history was under attack. The focus of Boys From The Blackstuff is five unemployed tarmac layers who will now do anything to earn money. We find them in night security, plastering and in Yosser Hughes (Barry Sloane) stomping intimidatingly around Liverpool 8 asking everyone and anyone to ‘Gissa job, I can do that.’ His boasts of being able to do anything sees him build a wall – cash-in-hand – that instantly gets him the sack. ‘You can’t sack me cos I don’t really work here,’ he says to the site manager before nutting him.
I could very much relate to the decline and closure of the docks when containerisation meant big ships could not moor up in the shallow waters by Tower Bridge and even if they could, no container lorries could get into the small 19th century streets of Shad Thames that were designed and built for horse and carts.
One year after the Boys last stint of legal work the rot has set in. There is a feeling of emasculation, a lack of pride and a sense of desperation amongst them as they turn on each other. At the centre is George(Philip Whitchurch), the eldest and the voice of reason who has watched his city slowly crumble. Liverpool’s decline becomes George’s decline.
But behind every unemployed man is a strong woman and there are plenty here. There is a tremendously emotional scene between Chrissie and Lauren O’Neil when she accuses him of giving up on work: ‘All I’ve got is half a tin of Spam in the fridge and a hole in me left shoe,’ she cries while berating him. And there are comic turns with the Dole Office ladies conducting monotonous, form-filling, tick-box interviews with the Boys. Plus, comedy is injected into the sad reality of having to hide when bailiffs and debt collectors come a-knocking.
Yosser Hughes’ ‘Gissa job’ phrase fell into common parlance and is used today by people who know not where it originated. It is used hilariously when he accosts a milkman on his rounds: ‘Gissa job! I can do that; I can milk a cow.’ And to the the lady at the school crossing, ‘I can hold a lollipop, gissa job!’ But to old George, the veteran of dock strikes and marches who hands out advice to anybody who asks, like a Citizens Advice Bureau, Yosser admits, ’I couldn’t do your job…’
But no humour is added to the student telling Yosser that he is ‘scared’, or when social services take his kids, nor at the funeral of a dear friend. These are the seminal scenes. Death is done in slo-mo; James Graham gets the mood just right.
Amy Jane Cook’s set truly evokes the the feeling of a city carved up by corrugated iron sheets hiding the wasteland of slum clearance projects that ran out of money.
I’m not sure if it was done intentionally but when Dixie(Mark Womack), moonlighting as a security guard, was asked to turn a blind eye to some Monkey Boots going surreptitiously out the dock gates, it took me back to a time when any Bermondsey boy who had a family member working in the Surrey Docks was wearing Monkey Boots off the Polish ships.
Perhaps younger members of the audience who did not live through those times, or see the iconic, BAFTA-winning 80s’ TV series, will not understand this play as much as those that did, but it would not impact on their enjoyment of this wonderful piece of work that we should thank Liverpool’s Royal Court for.
National Theatre until 8th June. Booking: https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/productions/boys-from-the-blackstuff/
Boys From The Blackstuff transfers to the Garrick Theatre from June 13th – August 3rd.
