The prison drama is a well worn staple of theatre.
The post-prison drama, dealing with the challenges released prisoners face in trying to assimilate into society (be it through guilt, necessity, or a desire to tread the straight and narrow ), is far less common. And it's this territory that Alan Wilkins covers here in this A Play, A Pie and A Pint co-production with Dundee Rep.
Set in a bar, it finds three women, hardboiled Vi (Irene MacDougall), posh Shona (Emily Winter), and the tagged Megan (Natalie Wallace) – all of whom have been recently been through the prison system together – weighing the pros and cons (pun intended) of changing the direction of their lives.
Vi is the archetypal, matriarchal old lag, for whom a life of crime has always been the family business. But that family business, which by various means ended up bringing all three into each other's orbit in prison, is about to be asset-stripped thanks to the Proceeds of Crime Act.At the play's centre lies a not-entirely-convincing moral quandary about ill-gotten gains and redemption. Vi wants to retire (with a tidy crime-money pension of course), and in a two-fingered salute to the system wishes to make a gift of the bar to her two chalk-and-cheese companions. But won't dirty money always be dirty money, no matter what you do with it later?
As a study in redemption – " I don't do guilt," says Vi – and choosing the right path, the piece is slightly sugar-coated. But the performances of the quite excellent cast are top-notch.
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