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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Elaine C Smith stars in David Greig-directed play This Wide Night
Tron Theatre, Glasgow from Thursday February 20, 2014, until Saturday March 15, 2014. More info: www.tron.co.uk