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This Wide Night

You wouldn’t think I’m a free woman, would ye?  Twelve f*****’ years inside an’ I’m still not free. Not properly. Read more …

Marie and Lorraine were cell-mates, but then Marie got out. When Lorraine turns up at Marie’s bedsit, the foundation of their friendship suddenly seems very fragile indeed. In prison, everything was simple, but in the precarious and frightening world outside there are no rules. It's very easy to get lost. By turns funny, truthful, tender and sad, This Wide Night is a study of two women with nothing but each other to hold on to.

Some people are rich and some people are poor. Some people's mothers work in Greggs and some don't. Not everyone can be alright, Marie. That isn't how things work.

The critical consensus

The problems of life on the outside are explored clearly and seriously, and the ambition of the script, to represent a pair of voices often excluded from society, is respected by the direction and the restrained performances of Johnson and Smith.

Gareth K Vile, The Stage, 26/02/2014

Only as the play goes on, and we realise that their greatest dependency is not on drugs or alcohol but on each other, does their odd couple relationship begin to find its emotional force.

***(*)(*)Mark Fisher, The Guardian, 27/02/2014

The piece as a whole convinces, based as it is on accounts from real offenders, and the overwhelming feeling that one leaves with is of sympathy for these vulnerable and often forgotten women whose only real support outside prison is one another.

*****Lauren Humphreys, TVBomb, 26/02/2014

It’s rare for such a short play, it only runs to 80 minutes, to cover so much ground, yet to seem to have so many layers of meaning; and to touch so many chords with its audience.

*****R.G. Balgray, The Public Reviews, 26/02/2014

Smith’s excellent, understated performance as Lorraine uses caustic one-liners to mask bigger insecurities and a darker, deeper strand of temper which may point to what put her in prison in the first place. Johnson moves between a manic, childlike energy and a desperate defensive vulnerability, dancing on the edge of despair. Moss’s play is dense, intricate, subtle.

****(*)Susan Mansfield, The Scotsman, 01/03/2014

The play’s realism – which is reflected in designer Karen Tennent’s assiduously detailed set and in the convincingly emotive performances of Johnson and Smith – has its limitations. Typically of its genre, it prefers surface meanings to ambiguity or metaphor. Consequently, it delivers more pathos than poetry.

Mark Brown, Scottish Stage (Sunday Herald), 03/03/2014

The play does poke at the consciousness and successfully asks questions about the way we treat people, especially those who are marginalised because of previous incarceration.

***(*)(*)Eric Karoulla, The Skinny, 17/03/2014


Features about This Wide Night

Elaine C Smith stars in David Greig-directed play This Wide Night

Lorna Irvine, The List, 22/01/2014

Where and when?

Tron Theatre, Glasgow from Thursday February 20, 2014, until Saturday March 15, 2014. More info: www.tron.co.uk

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