Iron: Playing Up, Rondo Theatre, Bath
Iron
Playing Up
The Rondo Theatre, Bath
Prison life has always been a popular topic for stage or screen and Rona Munro's play, first performed in 2003, makes for great theatre, but it's more Myra Hindley than Porridge.
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Set in women's prison, we follow lifer Fay (a terrific twitching, nervous, manipulating portrayal by Sophie Brooks), meeting her daughter Josie after 15 years inside without contact.
Fay's relationship with the warders is established over the years but the arrival of her 25-year-old daughter challenges the established pattern. Josie has returned to England after years abroad so her arrival is a shock to Fay and an opportunity to live vicariously through her daughter's experiences, past and present. "All I've got now is your life," Fay tells Josie, but what does she really want?
The routine and requirements of prison visits are a learning curve for Josie, as are the forgotten details of her murdered father.
Emotions run high when visits are barred, but equally fraught as they resume when the mother is on hunger strike. Ultimately the situation is restored to what passed as normal originally, but how normal is this and how have lives been changed, if at all?
The set is simple with bare lighting and effective musical background, principally using Sandy Denny's apt Who Knows Where the Time Goes?
Performances by Andy Cork and Caroline Murray as the guards with Alicia Hill in the daughter's role are pitch perfect, and the tension never lets up.
Entertainment is hardly a good description; unmissable would suit though.
Philip Horton
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