Image: 

Published: 8 April, 2011
by KARINA WHALLEY 

THE many fingers of this play slip into your chest cavity and squeeze your heart hard. In the claustrophobic confines of the Old Red Lion theatre, you find yourself sitting inside the prison of a 17th century house, condemned to quarantine for 28 days as the plague ravishes all outside.

Your co-confined are an unlikely bunch and the days tie them together, forcing them to peel back their social conditioning.

Mr and Mrs Snelgrave are rich and repressed. Morse is “old inside”, a 12-year-old with a vivid imagination. Bunce is a poor sailor with a life as tough as the 17th century could dish out. 

Through a continuous lyrical swirl of text, the prisoners’ voices intertwine as they enter a delirious awakening of their most basic selves, each piercing the other in different forms. Class, compassion, power and prejudice are stripped naked in the face of impending death.

The performances are searing and raw – expected from an experienced cast, including the likes of Coronation Street’s Ian Gain. Sue Colverd directs vitality into the play, but it is surely the great playwright, political writer and poet Naomi Wallace’s voice that gives it its punch. 

Fifteen years since it was last staged, the play doesn’t fail to resonate.

In fact, Wallace describes Red Dog Theatre Company’s production of her play as “one of the best – gritty, sensual, inventive and intense”. 

It is indeed all of the above, and as you are swept up in its hysterical crescendo you can’t help but feel glad to be living in this time. 

You will walk out shocked and rattled, but it is worth every moment. This play is superb.

Until April 16
020 7837 7816