When James Graham met Alan Bleasdale: bringing Boys From the Blackstuff to the stage
As the acclaimed 1982 TV series Boys from the Blackstuff is adapted for Liverpool’s Royal Court, Catherine Jones talks to writers James Graham and Alan Bleasdale about how their mutual admiration helped bring it to life for the stage
An “incredibly passionate letter” and a few magic words proved key when it came to bringing together one of the UK’s most in-demand playwrights and a master of social-realist drama.
And almost five years after director Kate Wasserberg first approached James Graham and Alan Bleasdale with the idea for a stage version of the latter’s seminal 1982 TV drama Boys from the Blackstuff, her vision has finally come to fruition, with a new production premiering this month at Liverpool’s Royal Court.
Bleasdale, speaking in a rare interview, admits he had dismissed approaches over the years for him to sit down and transform the BAFTA-winning series into a play, fearing he would find doing so impossible and believing no one else would be able to achieve it either.
But he was finally swayed when Wasserberg wrote him that letter, “supported by my agent who rated her very highly, saying exactly what she wanted to do with it, and it made complete sense”, he says today.
Meanwhile, Wasserberg had also approached Graham to talk about ‘a project’. At the time, the Olivier award-winning playwright had just had two plays in the West End simultaneously, was working on his next stage work, Quiz, and also had what would become his acclaimed TV drama Sherwood in the pipeline, so was ready to refuse to take on more. Until Wasserberg mentioned Boys from the Blackstuff and Bleasdale, that is, and then he found himself unable to resist.
‘Like trying to get pandas to mate in the zoo, Kate Wasserberg brought us together at a Chinese restaurant on the Liverpool docks’ – James Graham
“It stopped me in my tracks,” Graham recalls, “and I thought: ‘I can’t believe you fucking said that! I was going to have a holiday for the first time in three years.’
“We didn’t know how we were going to do it, or what we were going to do. But like trying to get pandas to mate in the zoo, she brought us together at a Chinese restaurant on the Liverpool docks.”
Wasserberg’s matchmaking success is evident when we meet in the Liverpool sunshine, where a palpable sense of both mutual professional respect and admiration, and genuine warmth, radiates from the two writers.
Bleasdale is in bubbling form as he talks about taking his much-loved screen characters and seeing them come alive on stage.
Ahead of that initial meeting over a Chinese meal, he reveals he had read a ‘big book’ of Graham’s plays and, as they left the dockside restaurant, turned to him and said: “Do you know how good you are?”
“I know how important quality work is,” Bleasdale explains. “And that’s what I saw in James’ work – and a truthfulness.”
Graham laughs: “If I’d known, as I sat in my living room in London, that Alan Bleasdale was creaking open my big book of plays, I’d probably have passed out.”
Boys from the Blackstuff vividly captured a side of life in early 1980s Britain where the decline of traditional industries saw whole communities become mired in poverty as many – notably working-class men – lost their livelihoods and with them a sense of purpose.
Continues...
Q&A Alan Bleasdale
What was your first non-theatrical job?
Teacher.
What was your first theatrical job?
Playwright, straight in at the top.
What’s your next job?
Signing on.
What do you wish someone had told you when you were starting out?
Not everybody will be as wonderful as your first director.
Who or what is your biggest influence?
My English teacher Mr Williams.
If you hadn’t been a playwright, what would you have been?
I’d have retired from teaching 12 years ago.
Do you have any theatrical superstitions or rituals?
Ask Willy Russell!
Q&A James Graham
What was your first non-theatrical job?
Window cleaner.
What was your first theatrical job?
Stage door keeper at Nottingham Theatre Royal.
What’s your next job?
Dear England in the West End.
What do you wish someone had told you when you were starting out?
Don’t meet your heroes – unless your hero is Alan Bleasdale.
Who or what is your biggest influence?
My drama teacher Mr Humphrey.
If you hadn’t been a playwright, what would you have been?
A history teacher.
Do you have any theatrical superstitions or rituals?
Whisky for luck, and not just in theatre.
Bleasdale, it turns out, actually wrote most of the series speculatively in the late 1970s, before the Conservatives swept to victory in the wake of the Winter of Discontent. But it was turned down four times by the controller of BBC One.
“You only had to walk the streets or read the Guardian to know that unemployment was going to be a real problem,” he points out. “You just knew it was on its way. But the people who were in positions of power at the BBC didn’t get that.
“The interesting thing is, if it had come out in 1977, when unemployment wasn’t three million, it would have been dismissed. But when it happened, the timing for me, if not for the rest of the country, was perfect.”
When the series was finally screened – on BBC Two – in the autumn of 1982, it certainly spoke to the viewing public. So much so that it was quickly repeated, this time on BBC One.
Graham was four months old at the time and living in the heart of the north Nottinghamshire coalfields with his local-council worker dad and mum who worked as a barmaid.
Continues...
Related to this article
Watching the series later, as a child, he recalls how it struck a deep chord with him; when he came to write Sherwood, his gripping and critically acclaimed BBC drama set in a mining village fractured by the 1984 strike, it was “not un-heavily inspired by Alan’s work”.
In fact, Blackstuff, he says, “really informed my voice as a writer and, actually, my love of what I think drama can do in terms of telling stories about community, about a time and place, an economic and political and social moment.”
The play is billed as ‘Alan Bleasdale’s Boys from the Blackstuff by James Graham’. So how much of each of them is in the version theatre audiences will see?
Bleasdale pauses to consider, then says: “This will sound daft, but it’s all me and it’s all him.”
Graham initially revisited the five original hour-long episodes, written in anthology structure, plus the 1980 BBC Play for Today titled The Black Stuff, which had first introduced the characters of Chrissie, Loggo, George, Dixie and the unforgettable Yosser Hughes.
The challenge became how to weave all that into a two-hour stage play without losing the essence of the characters and the impact of their individual stories.
Workshopping ideas and scenes helped the early process and, from there, Graham created a fresh draft, attempting to channel Bleasdale’s distinctive voice into his own script.
Graham explains: “The best way I can describe it is that it’s a bit like if you’re listening to an orchestra and you press stop and then have to carry on with the rhythm, musicality and tone. And that’s what I tried to do.
“I immersed myself in the very identifiable and distinguishable rhythm of these characters speaking. Once they stopped, I just sort of had to carry on. And then begin to have confidence. And a bit of arrogance.
“It’s arrogant for me to take Dixie Dean and go: ‘I think I can put some words in his mouth.’ These are almost real people – going back to that idea of truth – to me.”
Still, he did it, and Bleasdale marvels: “I remember thinking, how can a young man from the middle of the country manage to create the sense of a port city and what that port means to that city?
“It’s beautifully written, but it’s a part of Liverpool I hadn’t touched on.”
Continues...
Meanwhile, Graham recalls Bleasdale leaning over to him during that first workshop and saying: “Did you write that or did I write that?”
“And I thought: ‘Oh my gosh.’ It was the best compliment – deliberate or accidental,” Graham says. “And I feel the same. There are things where I can’t quite remember how we came together at it, and that gives me confidence that an audience won’t.”
The proof will be in the pudding at the Royal Court, whose audience is fiercely passionate about its city, and about seeing characters and situations it recognises up on the stage.
Seven years ago, the theatre produced Bleasdale’s Miller-esque drama Down the Dock Road, a black comedy about Liverpool dockers inspired by a summer holiday job he took as a wet-behind-the-ears security guard, and which deals with issues such as power, social mobility, dreams and disappointments.
There’s a certain continuity, not just in its themes, but also with two of Dock Road’s cast – Nathan McMullen and Andrew Schofield are playing key roles in this production, McMullen as Chrissie Todd and Schofield as George Malone. Schofield is perhaps best known for starring in the title role in Bleasdale’s 1984 series Scully, and he also appeared as Nosebleed Policeman in an episode of the original Blackstuff series.
While there’s desolation aplenty in Boys from the Blackstuff, one of its underestimated themes is hope; hope beneath the gallows humour and hope more explicitly voiced by a fading Malone when he reminisces about his life.
Peter Kerrigan, who played the role on screen, “was passionate about that speech of his containing hope and not despair. He fought me for it,” Bleasdale says.
For Graham, theatre, too, is designed around hope – particularly where, he suggests, it seems to be missing in everyday life.
He smiles: “Without being really sentimental, I get hope even by the fact of people getting together in a theatre.
“A thousand people are going to get in there and pretend that something is real for two hours. And I think that will really illuminate Alan’s key theme of how, as a community, you keep your faith in one another.”
CV Alan Bleasdale
Born: 1946, Liverpool
Training: Padgate College of Education, Warrington
Landmark productions:
Theatre:
• Having a Ball, Liverpool Playhouse (1981)
• Are You Lonesome Tonight?, Liverpool Playhouse (1985)
• On the Ledge, Nottingham Playhouse and National Theatre, London (1993)
TV:
• Boys from the Blackstuff, BBC (1982)
• Scully, BBC (1984)
Awards:
• Broadcasting Press Guild award for Boys from the Blackstuff (1982)
• BAFTA writers award (1983)
• Royal Television Society award for Boys from the Blackstuff (1983)
• Evening Standard award for Are You Lonesome Tonight? (1985)
• Toronto International Film Festival international critics’ award for No Surrender (1985)
CV James Graham
Born: 1982, Nottinghamshire
Training: University of Hull (drama)
Landmark productions:
Theatre:
• This House, National Theatre (2012)
• Quiz, Chichester Festival Theatre (2017)
• Ink, Almeida Theatre, London (2017)
• Best of Enemies, Young Vic, London (2021)
• Dear England, NT (2023)
TV:
• Quiz, ITV (2020)
• Sherwood, BBC (2022)
Awards:
• Catherine Johnson Best Play Award (2007)
• Olivier award for Labour of Love (2018)
• Evening Standard award for Best of Enemies (2022)
• Royal Television Society award for Sherwood (2023)
Agent: Curtis Brown
Boys from the Blackstuff is at the Royal Court, Liverpool, from September 15 to October 28
Opinion
Opinion
Most Read
Across The Stage this weekYour subscription helps ensure our journalism can continue
Invest in The Stage today with a subscription starting at just £7.99
© Copyright The Stage Media Company Limited 2025
