Lifetime Review – An Inside Look at the Aging Prison Population | stage

A A decade ago, playwright Evan Blassie explored the complex pressures on young women in the play Girls Like That. While this searing drama was a stress test for a high school fraternity, Life concerns a similarly unstable fraternity of older men navigating the hallways of their own institution. Lenny (Peter White), Baxter (Ricky Fearon) and Norton (Sam Cox) are long-term prisoners who we first meet in Playing Cards. As their game progresses, it becomes clear that each of them has their own survival strategy, and Lenny’s failing memory makes him vulnerable to the other two.

They make an interesting trio, and are convincingly performed, although the play could delve further into Baxter and Norton’s contradictory behavior with their friend as Lennie is exploited and ultimately betrayed. Even more compelling is the relationship between Lenny and the young prison officer Mark (James Buckway), who takes on the role of his carer. That’s not in his job description, warns his colleague Sonia (Mona Goodwin), who distinguishes between “duty of care” and “duty of care.” Prisons exist to protect the public, but how, the play asks, can they better protect their inmates and staff?

Blassie exposes a dysfunctional system in which even small kindnesses can be viewed not simply as weakness but as professional transgressions: witness Mark’s nervous glances to make sure no one is watching him help Lenny tie his shoes. The older man confuses himself with his estranged son, and Backway later doubles in the role, in a finale that explores how violence, trauma, and the limitations of masculinity are passed down through generations. This scene isn’t intense enough and the effects of Lenny and Mark’s breakup also need an extra emotional charge, but throughout the film White excels at oscillating between affection and anger caused by his confusion.

Carefully directed by Esther Becker for the Synergy Theater Project, which creates work in prisons and theaters, the production carries its extensive research lightly. Unusually, it is neither didactic, nor nurturing to the audience, nor does it tell us how to judge the characters, even when painful actions are revealed.

Katy McPhee’s spartan, greyscale set reinforces the idea of ​​a prison service stripped of resources, faced with disruption, perilous waiting times for medical care, and staff exhaustion as officers struggle to separate their private and professional lives.

In dialogue full of colorful comedy, Blassie makes his characters retell the same stories. At first, this film conveys a sense of the mundane, but as the distinction between memory and invention blurs, there is a sense of stories clinging to as personal comforts akin to a special pillow that Baxter waits months for.

The points of tension could be sharper, but the play authentically captures its setting and asks complex questions about the growing number of older prisoners and about the state of the nation and its institutions.