Fathers Inside
Soho
Too True to be Good
Finborough
Oh, great. It’s one of those. Fathers Inside is a workshop-based outreach project directed by an actor/facilitator. Those last nine words encircle my heart like the clammy fingers of death. But the play is a surprise and offers a big, warm, manly handshake. It starts quietly. Seven young convicts on a drama course are getting to know each other. The atmosphere is steeped in hostility and male aggression. The dialogue feels ragged, conversational, obvious, boring even. And it’s not so much under-rehearsed as unrehearsed. This is deliberate. Life is unrehearsed, and this play’s amazing air of naturalism gradually sidelines your doubts and beguiles you into believing the actors are real people. They reveal themselves slowly, warily. Aswan is an angry black Cockney runt. Damian is a lanky, laid-back Jamaican dude.
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