Clean Break, that wholly admirable company focused on women with experience of the criminal justice system, celebrates its 40th anniversary this year. That is a birthday worth marking with fanfare — but certainly not with a devised piece that is as flimsy and unconvincing as Inside Bitch.
Stacey Gregg and Deborah Pearson have come up with a great idea that is entirely lost in its translation to the stage. The four performers, all of whom have served time, aim to examine the gap between the clichés of television prison dramas such as Bad Girls and Orange is the New Black and their actual lived experience. They decide to make their own prison drama, to be called Inside Bitch.
Over a choppy series of meandering and misfiring scenes, which involve too many badly explained card games, we gather little more than the fact that the women didn’t have to wear jumpsuits when inside.
This is a senseless squandering of potentially rich, informative and emotive material, as well as four warm and appealing performers. The work lasts only 60 minutes but it feels very long.
Until March 23 (020 7565 5000, royalcourttheatre.com)
