I, Daniel Blake’s heart is about as in the right place as you could get. The stage adaptation of Ken Loach’s 2016 film, chronicling Daniel Blake’s Sisyphean slog through a callous and circuitous welfare system after a heart attack renders him unfit to work, makes no bones about where it stands on the political dial. Austerity has failed, our support infrastructures are gutted, and the most vulnerable are being at best ignored and at worst scapegoated for the sins of those in power. It’s a vital message, especially when the same ignorant rhetoric lobbied at benefit claimants is now also being levelled at the trans community or refugees by a Conservative party in its death throes. And it is with that in mind that I say: I really wish I liked it more than I did.

It’s not that the production is ineffective in communicating its message. Having played Daniel in the original film, Dave John’s stage adaptation updates the material to reflect the ever-worsening cost-of-living crisis that has only tightened its stranglehold on the working class since 2016. An enormous screen looms ever-present over the set, on which are projected a rogue’s gallery of ‘tweets’ from (among others), Boris Johnson, Theresa May, Lee Anderson and Liz Truss. It’s a sort of anti-Greek chorus, promises of prosperity underscoring the mundane horror faced by those for whom it never came, admonishments of families not knowing how to ‘budget properly’ set alongside a mother skipping meals to feed her own child. You really can’t fault the immediacy with which the hypocrisy of the Tory government is laid bare.

This is backed up by some very affecting performances from our leads. David Nellist plays Daniel with a tangible warmth and generosity that makes you root for him in both his quiet resignation and eventual rebellion against the draconian frameworks holding him hostage. And the night really belongs to Bryony Corrigan as Katie, a single mother Daniel befriends after she moves to Newcastle. She delivers her lines with the rictus smile and barely suppressed tears of a woman hanging on by a thread, and the points when the mask finally slips, particularly in an intense unguarded moment at the food bank, make for the show’s most moving beats. Corrigan reads the show’s closing speech with a poignancy and authenticity that reflects her grounding influence on the show throughout.

Where I, Daniel Blake stumbles, though, is that it requires a grounding influence in the first place. I’m by no means an adaptation purist; I’m absolutely at peace with the fact that things will inevitably change in the transfer from one medium to another. But I couldn’t help but feel that something had been lost here. The strength of the 2016 film lay in its realism, and indeed in the fact that it was something of an ordeal to get through. The understated line delivery and naturalistic performances that gave the film such grit can’t, of course, be replicated onstage, but the more stylised, mannered theatrical delivery creates a detachment from what is billed as an unflinching reflection of reality. And don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing necessarily wrong with parable - sometimes you need to state the obvious at the expense of realism, and it works well in scenes with more overt institutional critique, like Daniel’s farcical runaround conversations with his case worker. But it also slightly deflates the more quiet, character-driven scenes of the true vulnerability that made them sing onscreen.

In the movie, we trudge along with Blake through the streets of Newcastle to every job centre meeting, every CV delivery, feeling the strain in a way that the slick scene transitions of the stage simply don’t communicate. The minimalist set design might well convey the clinical facelessness of the institutions Daniel and Katie grapple with, but it also means that in moments where contrast really needs to be shown, like Daniel finding a fix for Katie’s heating or selling off his possessions, it relies too heavily on theatre of the mind to really hit home. Similarly, you can visibly track film Daniel’s decline - by the end he looks like absolute hell - in a way that just isn’t there in stage Daniel; he occasionally looks a little winded but the ticking clock is so much quieter for our inability to see up close. Daisy, Katy’s daughter, is played by adult actor Jodie Wild and she sells it gamely, but it’s a tough ask to elicit the same pathos out of Daniel refusing help from an actor in their twenties than from an actual child.

I think my feelings for the show can be summed up in the execution of its Big Moment, Daniel’s iconic last straw act of rebellion in which he spray paints a demand for his appeal date on the side of the job centre wall. It’s undeniably powerful - the music swells as the letters appear on the backdrop screen; Daniel turns and raises his arms in triumph, and a bystander sitting outside the job centre door congratulates him on his efforts as he’s led away by the police. But as Daniel exits, this bystander turns to us and delivers a speech about the current government’s failures; a crumbling NHS, crowded food banks, cynical diversion tactics by those in power.

In the film, the equivalent speech is delivered directly to the cops leading Daniel away as a crowd looks on; it feels extemporary, an unrehearsed cry of defiance by a city and its people. Here it is directed at the audience, and again the politics of the speech itself are absolutely sound, and of course it received a round of applause because, well, how can you not support those sentiments? But the speech itself is much more practised and authoritative, and as a result feels far more contrived and hand-holding, as though the play feels the need to get up and say “THIS IS WHAT THE SHOW’S ABOUT!”, when it’s already made that point with absolute clarity through less overt means.

I, Daniel Blake wants to remind you that it is not a work of fiction. The tribulations faced by Daniel, Katie and their contemporaries are a reality across the country - the programme highlights organisations like the Trussell Trust and the Hygiene Bank so audiences can be turned towards real, direct action and public good. There is so much to admire about the good this show wants to impart, the political fire it wants to stoke. If this was the only incarnation in which I had seen it, I would likely be singing its praises more - it is moving, it is well-acted, it is a necessary message contemporary to our political moment. But for me at least, it’s hampered by the sheer brilliance of its origins, and with the move from stage to screen delivers its hard politics with a softer touch.