Theatre: Boys from the Blackstuff, Theatre Royal, Glasgow, Neil Cooper, Four stars

Down by the docks they’re talking tough in James Graham’s stage adaptation of Alan Bleasdale’s classic 20th century TV drama. For the unlikely Liverpool lads thrown on the scrap heap in the thick of 1980s Thatcher’s Britain, all that talk won’t pay their rent or feed their kids. As each man moves from dole office to cash in hand desperation to an increasingly volatile home life, the Kafkaesque absurdities of the dole office ‘sniffers’ become the enemy.

Licking their wounds from the disaster of a get rich quick job a year ago, Chrissie, Loggo, Yosser, George, Dixie and Dixie’s son........

© Herald Scotland