About Lifers
Saturday 18th October 2025
Last week, I went to the Southwark Playhouse (Borough) to see Evan Placey’s new play, Lifers. Produced by Synergy Theatre Project, this is an almost overwhelmingly powerful 105-minute drama about life inside HMP Drummond, a prison housing long-term inmates. We first see Lenny, Baxter and Norton playing poker. As the game progresses, it becomes apparent that Lenny is not well. He has lapses of memory which suggest dementia, or something more sinister. Although these mates banter, and also bully each other, Lenny’s health gets more individual attention from Mark, a young officer, although his colleague Sonya points out that they don’t have a “duty to care”, only “duty of care”. In fact, the play mercilessly exposes the drawbacks of a prison system where inmates not only have to wait to be released, but also wait months for health care. When Lenny is finally visited by his son, Simian, there’s a heartfelt scene in which the father’s toxic masculinity is fully revealed, and which complicates our initial sympathy for him. But the entire piece is notably unsentimental, and thoroughly realistic about the ethical crisis in our prisons. At one point Mark ascribes the quotation “A civilization is measured by how it treats its weakest members” to Gandhi, although Sonya points out that the Mahatma never said those words (it was American writer and novelist Pearl Buck). Either way, the sentiment feels right, and Lifers — with all its moments of aggression, betrayal and despair — provides a very punchy criticism of the system, while also including plenty of humour. Synergy supremo Esther Baker directs on Katy McPhee’s bare and grey set, getting convincing and sincere performances from Peter Wight (Lenny), Ricky Fearon (Baxter), Sam Cox (Norton), James Backway (Mark and Simian) and Mona Goodwin (doctor Sonya and another doctor). This play is gruelling in its emotional intensity and honest in its depiction of the failures of our society. It’s a hard watch, but a truthful one, a great example of campaigning theatre.
© Aleks Sierz
- Lifers is at the Southwark Playhouse until 25 October.
