When Ken Loach’s film I, Daniel Blake was released in 2016, it was a shock and a wake-up call to many viewers – about just how precarious lives could be in an era of austerity, food banks, and a punitive and byzantine benefits systems. The movie follows a normal, hard-working Geordie tradesman, Daniel Blake, as he tries to claim disability allowance after having a heart attack and being told to have a period off work by the doctor. He is slowly and steadily crushed by a broken benefits system that assumes the worst of claimants.

It would be nice to think it was a period piece, that things had improved in Britain. But when I, Daniel Blake was adapted into a theatre production, opening at Northern Stage in Newcastle before touring widely in 2023, the response was just as ferocious as it was to the film. “Every night we did it, people stood up – it had standing ovation after standing ovation,” recalls the play’s director, Mark Calvert. Even more importantly: every night they collected donations for food banks, and every night they were blown away by audiences’ generosity.

And it wasn’t just a Newcastle response to a Newcastle story: the recognition roared wherever they took the show. “The Birmingham audience were so vocal about it, in ways that I’ve never heard an audience ever respond to anything I’ve been involved in,” says Calvert. One man stood up at the end and said that his wife had been killed by this system; another started shouting about how outrageous it all was. “And that happened everywhere it went,” adds Calvert.

So, it is perhaps no wonder that the team behind that production have reunited to put this story back on stage in 2026 – with David Nellist who played Daniel returning, alongside new cast members, and Calvert back in the director’s seat. The production has a script by Dave Johns – the actor who originally played Daniel in the film – and while the plot beats stay close to the original, the play has space for getting further into the characters’ backstories, most notably expanding the role of Katie, Daniel’s neighbour.

“It’s as much about Katie as it is about Daniel – that was really important,” Calvert tells me when we speak via Zoom during their rehearsals. Played by Jessica Johnson, Katie is a homeless single mum, who’s been rehoused from London to Newcastle. After getting on a wrong bus, in a city she doesn’t know, she’s slightly late for an appointment at the Job Centre – and faces cruel sanctions that see her having to skip meals to make sure her child is fed. It’s heartbreaking – although the tender friendship, kindness and humour between Katie and Daniel is one of things that gives both the film and the play a heartbeat of hopefulness amid the despair.

Since they last staged the play, some things have changed in the UK – we now have a Labour government, who you might hope would be interested in supporting the most vulnerable in society. So have things improved, I ask Calvert – and how are such changes in the political climate reflected in the production?

“I think it’s got worse, which is unfortunate under a Labour government,” says Calvert, candidly. On a practical note, he points out that he’s worked with Newcastle Food Bank around the productions – and where a few years ago, that was a moderately modest venture running eight sessions across the city, they now run 20 sessions every week, simply because the need is there.

He worries that foodbanks have become normalised, too. “The volunteers, they’re not getting paid for it. They’re doing it to help people. And as a society, we’ve accepted that the government won’t plug that gap,” he says. “The most shocking thing is that we accept it and it’s normal. I find that extraordinary, for a country of this wealth.”

In the first staging of the play, Calvert alighted on a way to help bring the story of I, Daniel Blake more wholly into 2023: by projecting quotes and soundbites from politicians onto the stage, so that the lines the public are fed were juxtaposed to the human story unfolding in front of us. And it’s a trick they’re repeating this time – and updating to reflect the changing political landscape in the UK.

“Last time it was essentially the six Prime Ministers from the Conservative Party,” explains Calvert. “This time we’re having to mix in Labour and Reform – and to essentially say, it’s the system that is inherited that is constantly trying to punch down. I think it’s incredibly concerning to be always looking to victimise the people below us.”

Calvert vividly remembers watching the original movie when it came out; he took his wife to see it in the cinema, and was stunned by her reaction, he recalls how the film really galvanised her. “I’ve never seen her so upset and angry.” And it was the memory of that reaction – an understanding of the potential power of this story – that meant that he jumped at the chance to be involved in making a stage version of the film.

Not that it wasn’t a daunting task, at times: while Sixteen Films, the company who made the film, were supportive of the adaptation, Calvert and the writer Dave Johns certainly felt some first night nerves – or as he puts it, “total fear” – when the show opened and the original creators came along to watch. “Ken Loach, Paul Laverty who wrote [the script] originally, and Rebecca O’Brien who produced it had flown back from Cannes especially to see it,” he recalls. “Luckily, they all really appreciate what we’d done… it was great.”

Of course, it was a welcome seal of approval from some cinema legends. But the audience who Calvert really wants to impress are just normal people in towns and cities around the UK. He understands that times are tough and there’s a lot of distressing global news taking up our attention currently – but he hopes that I, Daniel Blake will be a reminder to continue to look at what’s happening on our doorsteps, and to help out in our local communities or support our local foodbanks.

“Hopefully this will hopefully inspire some people to just give a little bit – to go, ‘I will give some time, or I will donate some food, or I will donate whatever change I’ve got in my pocket’. Because it all helps, genuinely.”