I, Daniel Blake
An update to Ken Loach’s #iconic 2016 film🎬, Tiny Dragon Productions & English Touring Theatre's staged adaptation of “I, Daniel Blake” at Traverse Theatre swaps the cinematic intimacy for a larger, polemic canvas, punctuated with tweets & provocative parliamentary soundbites. Though effective, the play paints its politics with broad strokes, arguably losing some of the movie's nuanced insights 🎭...
Adapted by David Johns, the film's titular star, the play has shades of #melodrama, at times embracing an almost romanticised view of the ‘working-poor’ struggle. While not #DavidCopperfield, it deals in classic tropes: the “salt-of-the-earth” everyman, the nobility of manual labour, the tragic maiden driven to prostitution. Are they archetypes🤔? Yes, but the saving grace comes from the cast, who imbue these generic characters with vibrancy…
The narrative revolves around the lives of Daniel Blake (David Nellist), a carpenter recovering from a heart attack, and Katie (Bryony Corrigan), a young mother from London looking for a fresh start. Both struggling to navigate the UK’s arduous benefits system…
The stage is an imposing entity, with towering mobile shelving units used to delineate scenes. Looming above it all is a billboard, showing a constant stream of political ads— the heartless #BigBrother vibes are strong with this symbol of ‘The State’...
But some iconic moments lose their depth in this script, which *spoiler* shifts pivotal scenes from the public to private realms. Katie’s desperate attempt to quell her hunger by eating raw baked beans moves from a busy food bank to a private corner. Alone on stage, Daniel’s crowd-rousing vandalising of the job centre feels like an individual, not a collective act of defiance. While these changes avoid supernumeraries, they play down the fact that this story isn’t just about poverty or a flawed system; it's about shame…
The script’s real strength lies in its underlying questions. Why does seeking help equate to “scrounging”? Why the resistance to interdependence? Is our society teaching us solitude over solidarity? Despite its broader scope, #IDanielBlake retains its heart— a searing, moving demand for compassion. 4/5⭐