I, Daniel Blake at HOME
Johnny James, Managing EditorBook now
I, Daniel Blake
Always double check opening hours with the venue before making a special visit.
I, Daniel Blake returns to the stage at HOME as a reminder that some stories refuse to become historical. Nearly a decade on from Ken Loach’s 2016 film, the conditions it depicted are not relics of austerity past, but an ongoing reality for millions across the UK.
Daniel Blake is a carpenter from Newcastle, recovering from a heart attack and declared unfit for work, yet caught in a system that refuses to let him rest. Katie is a single mother newly relocated from London, finally offered a council house and the promise of stability. Their meeting is unremarkable, almost accidental. The consequences are not.
Adapted for the stage by Dave Johns – who played Daniel Blake in the original film – this production pares the story back to its essentials. There is no attempt to inflate the material into spectacle. Instead, the focus is on process: forms, assessments, waiting rooms, phone calls that lead nowhere. Bureaucracy becomes the antagonist.
What gives I, Daniel Blake its force is its refusal to fictionalise poverty into metaphor. With 14.3 million people now living in poverty in the UK, the play lands less as adaptation than as documentation. The dialogue is plain-spoken, the situations recognisable. Dignity is not dramatised as heroism, but as persistence.
The touring production has already picked up major recognition, including Excellence in Touring at the UK Theatre Awards, and Best Writer and Best Performing Artist at the North East Culture Awards. Those accolades speak to the care with which the story has been handled – and to the continued relevance of its anger.
I, Daniel Blake continues to ask a simple and uncomfortable question: what does it say about a society when survival itself becomes an administrative challenge?
