The clash of idealism and realism has always been a good basis for drama. And Ron Hutchinson offers a lively variation on a familiar theme in Lags, in which a do-gooding actress conducts an educational drama class with five recalcitrant male prisoners. Even if the play has a narrative neatness that reminds you Hutchinson has been Hollywood-based for over a decade, it still gives you an instructive view of life on the inside.
Hutchinson's heroine, Eva, goes into prison believing drama can offer both therapy and uplift. Her first opponent is a burly, cynical female warder called Prison Officer Catesby. And the men themselves, ruled over by the menacing Burdock, who is doing eight years for armed robbery, don't exactly look as if they're yearning for theatrical self-expression. But slowly Eva, through the use of standard drama-class exercises, wins their trust, interests the men in Alan Sillitoe's The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner and even gets Burdock to talk about his own stumbling efforts at creative writing. The question the play poses, however, is whether any visitor can ever fully understand the power-structures within the prison system.
Hutchinson's virtue is that he shows as well as tells. We get to see Eva leading the men in tongue-loosening exercises that involve comically chanting: "I want to be a wallaby called Willoughby." We also get to see how an improvised visiting-day scene between a prisoner and his suspiciously pregnant wife releases all kinds of dangerous emotions. Best of all are the scenes where Catesby cuts short any hint of creative exuberance with heavy irony reminding us that prison officers have a vested interest in preserving the status quo. The prisoners themselves, suggests Hutchinson, are terrified of change; the prison staff don't really want it.
The play offers a persuasive indictment of the present system: one in which any idealistic initiative is likely to be crushed by institutional conservatism. My only cavil is that, in order to make his point, Hutchinson exaggerates both the optimism of Eva and her consequent disillusionment. I'd have thought anyone working in prison would have a more hard-headed attitude towards the potential pitfalls. But, even if story values sometimes take precedence over characterisation, Emma Fildes is immensely beguiling as Eva: her open features provide a visible map of her constantly shifting emotions. And, in Caroline Hunt's production for Show of Strength, there is firm support from Kolade Agboke as the ferocious Burdock and Claire Cogan as the sardonic Catesby, who at one point tells Eva: "Come in here with expectations low and you might be pleasantly surprised." Good advice for a critic; except that I went with expectations high and was far from disappointed.
· Till November 10. Box office: 0117 902 0344.
