5 STARS. "This is wholly immersive theatre, not for the faint-hearted but truly rewarding," says Andrew Morris
Friday night. Café Mila in Godalming. The yoga studio upstairs. 20-25 people sit in 4 rows of folding chairs. Jack Lynch, the co-founder of Lynchpin Productions and director of tonight's performance, is dressed in black and sits to the side, near the front and angled towards the audience. He makes a brief introduction. The cast of six, also dressed in black and each holding the script in a black folder, file wordlessly from the back of the studio to sit in the row of chairs in front of the audience.
As Jack reads the stage directions for each scene, actors stand and turn to confront the audience, delivering the words they read from the foldered script. This is a Scrip Tease event, where classic, rarely performed or completely new plays are delivered as rehearsed readings. Tonight is the world premiere of Escaping Mr Woolf, an adaptation by Daniel Smith of the book The Damage Done, written by Peter Woolf and telling the story of his remarkable life. The performance is told in two starkly polarised acts, just as Peter's life has been.
The first is not easy to hear, but it must have been challenging to read and act, and scarcely possible to live through. In a series of harrowing scenes, we are told of a childhood amongst violent career criminals, where Peter is almost proud to have committed his first theft – of an Oxo cube – at the tender age of 5. He is subjected to a daily diet of violent abuse at home, where he comes to realise that his sister is actually his mother, and his father is really his grandfather. His education is drug-fuelled, graduating to heroin aged just 15, when he is also gang-raped in a Brixton house.
From here the direction of his life is sadly inevitable. Drugs. Alcohol. Crime. Borstal. Reform school. Prison. Between sentences, we snatch glimpses of the abusive relationship with his girlfriend, herself an addict and prostitute. In one of the many prisons he experiences, he tells of sewing up another inmate's mouth. It's safer inside if the other prisoners think you're psychotic.
After decades of this cycle, he breaks into a smart house in Islington. The owner comes back with his family. The father confronts Peter. Peter smashes a vase over the man's head. Then, and only then, does Peter exhibit signs of wanting to escape this miserable existence. He has a visit from Kim, a prison officer, who tells him about the principle of Restorative Justice.
The metaphorical curtain fades for a short interval.
In the second act, Peter comes face to face with his last victim, Will Riley. Will is a hard-working, affluent middle-aged businessman but something within him wants to meet the criminal who could have killed him in his own home, and who has violently stolen Will's sense of being able to protect his family. Over the following months, Peter is transferred to an open prison for the first time in his life, and Will agrees to further meeting requests. When Peter is released on parole, Will asks him to dinner at home, believing that spending the first night of freedom as a guest in the same house he committed a violent crime will be beneficial to his rehabilitation. Soon afterwards they appear together in front of other offenders and their victims to espouse the principle of Restorative Justice.
This is the remarkable story of one man's life. Through his eyes we see the very worst of humanity, and the shining, hopeful best. It is a story of abject despair but also – ultimately – of compassion, forgiveness, hope and redemption.
Escaping Mr Woolf is performed with real passion by all the cast, but especially by James Sygrove as Peter. The emotions are elevated to an even higher level when Jack announces that Peter Woolf is in the audience, watching the performance for the first time himself. This is wholly immersive theatre, not for the faint-hearted but truly rewarding.
- Scrip Tease’s next reading is Noel Coward’s A Song at Twilight, on November 3. For more information and to book, visit: lynchpinptc.co.uk
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