Comedian, actor & writer Dave Johns, who played the title character in Ken Loach’s I, Daniel Blake, talks about the challenge of adapting the award-winning 2016 film for the stage...

As the eponymous hero in Ken Loach’s multi-award-winning film, I, Daniel Blake, comedian, actor & writer Dave Johns won the hearts of people across the world. 

So when he was asked to adapt the story for a stage show, he jumped at the chance.

The film’s story follows Dan, a fiftysomething Geordie, who has worked his whole adult life as a carpenter. After suffering a heart attack so serious that his doctors tell him to give up work, he turns to the state for support. But his benefits claim becomes a Kafkaesque nightmare in which he receives anything but help.

Along the way he befriends Katie, a young mother from London, who has been offered social housing in Newcastle. Like Dan, she also finds the welfare state to be anything but benevolent.

Dave, whose previous stage adaptations include The Shawshank Redemption, was keen to bring these characters to the theatre. 

“What interested me was taking Paul Laverty’s lovely script from the film and trying to adapt it for the stage,” he says. “That was the challenge and the excitement. I didn’t want to just put the film on stage. 

“When I made the film in Newcastle, working with Ken Loach, none of us realised what an impact it would have. When the film was released in 2016, it caught the imagination because the time was right and it was a very human story.

“I wanted the stage show to have the same emotional power as the film but bring it up to date, so that it wasn’t a history piece. So I started doing some research about what was different - and nothing was different! With the cost-of-living rise, foodbanks, austerity, it’s affecting even more people now. There are so many people just trying to make ends meet.” 

The film and the stage show aim to go beyond the statistics to the real lives of people down on their luck.

“When the film came out, the narrative from Government was that anyone who was on social security or was claiming benefits was not bothering to work and were scroungers. And the film showed how these things happen to ordinary people. What shocked people was that it could be your father, your daughter, your sister, your mother. Dan wasn’t a shirking scrounger, he was just an ordinary bloke, and the system wasn’t set up to help him or to help Katie. 

“The rhetoric was that if you’re on benefits, you’re not trying and you’re not contributing to society - but society doesn’t take into account how you get into that situation. The film showed this uncaring face of the state; the way it was set up was that they were making it as hard as possible for you to navigate the benefits system.”

Dave has made some changes to the tale for the stage show, which opens in Newcastle this month and comes to Birmingham Rep’s Studio space in mid-June.

“It’s an ensemble piece and the story is told by six actors. It’s basically Dan’s story as you think of it in the film, but I’ve written up Katie and the kids’ part in the play. We get a much more rounded idea of where Katie comes from and why she’s been sent from London up to Newcastle.

“I think audiences will get a more visceral emotional hit from the play than the film because you’re right there in the room with the actors and the action. It’s living and breathing, but there is humour as well. Both Dan and Katie have a good sense of humour, so there are moments of light relief. When you are faced with adversity, the one thing that keeps us all sane is a sense of humour.

“You have to have those moments of light relief because the harsh reality of how bleak their lives are would be too much to bear. So you will laugh and you’ll cry - that is what I hope is good theatre.”

But when Dave is so synonymous with the part of Daniel Blake, didn’t he want to reprise the role in theatres?

“The funny answer would be that I won lots and lots of awards for Daniel Blake, and I don’t want them to take them off me if I make a mess on stage!

“But actually, I think you do a piece of work and you’re proud of it, and I will always be proud of Daniel Blake. I have people who come up to me who recognise me and say how much that film meant to them and how much it moved them. But since then, I’ve gone on and done other films and projects, so I wasn’t tempted to recreate the role of Daniel Blake on stage. 

“And we have a fabulous cast. When we put the call out for six actors, we had more than 700 submissions. The cast we have are very talented, and it’s going to be a different take on it.”

Taking the role of Dan is David Nellist, who played Mike Stamford in BBC’s Sherlock. Katie is played by Bryony Corrigan, who is best known as Vanessa in Mischief Theatre’s BBC series The Goes Wrong Show. The production also has a new score composed by Ross Millard of The Futureheads.

Produced by Northern Stage, Birmingham Rep, ETT, Oldham Coliseum and Tiny Dragon Productions, directed by Mark Calvert and designed by Rhys Jarman, the stage show has some new theatrical elements.

“We have been very influenced by Led By Donkeys, who take Government tweets and project them onto the Houses of Parliament and posters,” says Dave. “We’re working with a company who will be doing projections. So there will be a narrative, a story in tweets, of what the Government policies have been, and then, on stage, there will be Dan and Katie’s lives, their experience of it. So you can judge what the Government is saying in tweets and what is happening in reality.

“I hope audiences will feel a connection with the people who are going through these problems, and that they will be angry when they go out after seeing the show. Theatre has a power to do this, to give people a human bond with what is happening on stage. The skill of good theatre is that you emotionally grab people, you entertain them, and if you impart some knowledge to them, then you go out changing their ideas of the world - and that’s the perfect thing.”

by Diane Parkes

I, Daniel Blake shows at The Rep, Birmingham, from Tuesday 13 to Saturday 24 June