Alan Bleasdale’s lacerating tale of working-class Liverpudlians wrestling with free markets and free will was a ground-breaking 1982 BBC drama, now revived as this touring stage production, adapted by James Graham. The original made a mark on popular culture with volatile workie Yosser Hughes (Jay Johnson playing the Bernard Hill role here) and his ‘gissa job’ catchphrase, but his signature head butts now raise laughs rather than gasps. The wider social context, of a workforce facing life without legal work in Thatcher’s Britain, remains much the same, with a bittersweet narrative illuminated by Bleasdale’s caustic humour.

The opening image of a falling man is resonant; Snowy Malone (Reiss Barber) brings ropes to his construction-site workplace to allow him to make a swift exit in case a benefits fraud team arrives unexpectedly, but the banister Malone attaches his rope to is a botched job. His farcical death accelerates the ongoing descent of Chrissie (George Caple), Loggo (Jurell Carter) and their crew, played by a game ensemble doubling and tripling up their roles with admirable efficiency.

With the UK benefits system currently under discussion, director Kate Wasserberg and Liverpool’s Royal Court Theatre do justice to Bleasdale’s famously astringent writing, with cutting side-swipes at religion (‘Paddy’s Wigwam’) and governments who see unemployment as a ‘growth industry’. There’s no need to update The Boys From The Blackstuff, a text which still resonates because it’s about ordinary people entangled by uncaring governments, a situation which hasn’t really improved since 1982.

The Boys From The Blackstuff is on tour until Saturday 5 July; reviewed at Theatre Royal, Glasgow.