I, Daniel Blake – Traverse Theatre
It’s too glib to simply give this a theatrical review. Yes, it’s well-acted, well-lit, commitment and emotion running through the production from top to bottom, but to thoughtlessly term it ‘entertainment’ would be to miss the point entirely.
Roughly eight years after a financial crash laid bare the clandestine, labyrinthine world of modern finance, providing a golden, once-in-a-generation opportunity to reform the rotting edifice, the film ‘I Daniel Blake’ was released, illustrating by how far this opportunity had been missed. Mysteriously, by 2016, many of the architects of the 2008 disaster were somehow richer than they’d ever been. Clearly there was still wealth-a-go-go in the country; it just kept winding up in the same pockets while ‘austerity’ persisted unabated, resulting in cut...
