The Guardian from London, Greater London, England • 43

The Guardian Wednesday April 30 1997 IS Ansntai Farm Ian Woodndge's outstanding adaptation has music by Test Department and marks a rare London sighting of Northern Stage. Young Vic, London (0171 -928 6363). until Saturday. The Herbal Bed Puritanism, apothecaries and Shakespeare's daughter make uneasy bedfellows in Peter Wheian's thought-provoking RSC play. Duchess Theatre, London (0171 -494 5075), until July 5.

unaer mm wooo Guy Mast arson, a fat bloke in pyjamas, rescues the one-man-show with a masterful rendition of Dylan Thomas's great work. Art Theatre, London (01 71 -836 21 32), in rep until May 1 7. as middle-aged granddaughter, Man, with her loquaciousness and longevity, you're inclined to think that McDonagh saw, clocked and went away and wrote the better play. At least something happens in The Beauty Queen Of Lenane. But despite the fact that Tom Murphy's play is as long and, at times, as boring and rambling as the apparently unending tale told by Mommo about how Bailegangaire became known as "the place of no it casts its dark spell.

In the gloomy, peaty thatched hovel there is a sense of having peered into the blackness, and discovered that light does sometimes shine in dark places. The bulk of Mommo, as rock-like, looming and deranged as one of Beckett's heroines, represents the husk of Ireland itself, cracking, crumbling and almost derelict. Her granddaughters Mary the high-flying nurse who suffered a crisis of confidence and ran back to the safety of home, only to find herself trapped, and Dolly, married to an abusive husband and pregnant by another man long to be free of her and their past. The writing is dense and occasionally balefully funny, but I missed in James Macdonald's bravely measured production the stifling sense of despair necessary to make you believe in the miracle of re-birth. Brid Brennan and Ruth McCabc capture just the right note of edgi-ness as the sisters, but it is Ros-aleen Lineham's sly, helpless jailer who remains indelibly etched on the mind.

Lyn Gardner Until May 24 (0171 -565 5000). Out Cry PHOTOGRAPH' NEIL LIBBERT Pirandello and Beckett and argues that theatres are ultimately prisons for both actors and dramatists, it never convinces us that we too are as entrapped and entombed as WUliams's symbolic siblings. Michael Billington Until May 17(0181-741 2311) Bailegangaire Royal Court, London You can't help wondering if Martin McDonagh caught a performance of Bailegangaire when it was produced by Druid Theatre in Galway back in 1985. Watching the first act of this story of an senile old woman, Mommo, tormenting her desperate The great escape work shopping Goldmines at Bullwood Hall. Director Nadla Molinari is standing on the right of the main picture PHOTOGRAPH GRAHAM TURNER Rule those kept separate from other offenders, often because of the nature of their crimes.

It was they who suggested the subject matter, female intimidation and bullying. In the afternoon workshop, taken by Goldmines' director, Nadia Molinari, and loosely based on the play, there are the first hints of how explosive the subject may prove. After reading a scene out of context, the women founder. The meaning is obscure, the wisecracking language difficult to grasp. Attempts to split into groups and direct the scene yield mixed results.

One group is pulled through by the determination of its leader, Bev, who worked with Theatre de Complicity on a multimedia project initiated by Clean Break. Another completely loses interest, and members of a third start arguing. Everyone is tired. Nobody wants to confront the issue. Wednesday afternoon.

The gym is filling up for the performance of Goldmines. There is a party atmosphere, despite disappointment that there will be no tea and cakes afterwards. The play begins. The lights do not go down. It is written in the style of a Chandleresque thriller in which Detective Dogeared Mugshot travels back to the past to track down the persecutors of Paluki Politely, victim of the playground bully.

The piece moves back and forward in time and the performers are constantly changing character. It isn't working. Within minutes the hum in the gym is turned into a buzz. A new arrival from Hol-loway generates rather more interest than what is going on on stage. A little less than a third of the way through, the atmosphere in the room suddenly changes.

The characters are now back in the past and Paluki is on the floor and being viciously bullied. The noise from the audience builds until you can no longer hear the dialogue. Some of the audience are on their feet trying to get a better look at the scene. Some are shouting for Paluki, others for her tormentor. The woman to my right stands up and walks towards the locked exit, tears streaming down her face.

Later it feels like the aftermath of a small disaster. Many of the women, particularly those who have attended the workshop, are enthusiastic about the play. Some arc angry, others just bored. Sue Saxton, Bull-wood's education officer, feels the play's message was unclear (judging by their reactions, some of the audience believed it endorsed violence) and that stylistically it has gone way over a lot of the women's heads. She is concerned that so many were distressed by a piece which confronts issues that are a common part of prison experience.

"Part of my uncertainty is how it failed to work for a young audience. I think there could be a lot of flak, a lot of pieces to pick up, she says grimly. Within hours Clean Break has taken the only step possible and cancelled all performances of the play in prison, although the public performances still have the go-ahead. Susannah Kraft, Clean Break's administrator, and Pauline Gladstone, the company's education officer, are mortified over what has happened. "It is a terrible cock-up," says Gladstone.

"People have learned to trust us, and now they are going to have to learn all over again. It will take time and a lot of hard work." But how could it happen? Clean Break has almost 20 years' experience of working in prisons. Its standing is reflected in the recent award of 1 million of Lottery money to create premises from which it can develop its programme of workshops and education for ex-offenders. It is a programme that is proven. One woman was recently accepted by the Central School of Drama; many have graduated into the profession.

Others have just found the self-esteem and confidence to face the world after a long time inside. The company's greatest plus has always been that it knew the territory. It was founded by women offenders for women offenders. The subject of the play each year is chosen not by the playwright but by the prisoners. How could they have so misjudged Goldmines' potential effect? All too easily.

Nobody from Clean Break's administration or board had seen the play before Bullwood or attended any rehearsals, and while it had already been performed in two other prisons, where the reaction was by no means so extreme, that may have been because the audiences were older and the prisons had open regimes. It will never happen again. But the Goldmines experience throws into relief the problem faced by a company determined to reach two cultures. Is the play produced each year by the writer in residence intended primarily for the prison audience or the public? Clean Break argues that the aim is for prison audiences to endorse the play and the public to learn from it. Education cuts both ways.

Both writer and director endorse the decision to pull the play's prison tour, but add that the pressures of trying to gear it towards both constituencies are enormous. "I think the writer and director should have a lot more guidance. I felt we were left to get on with it," says Molinari. One of Clean Break's greatest pluses, she says, is its experience of putting on its plays in prison. It would be useful for first-timers like her to have that experience to draw upon.

There is no doubt that Clean Break will bounce back. Things will certainly change: the method of mounting the play will be more carefully scrutinised, the lack of post-performance support workshops reexamined, the relationship with prisons carefully rebuilt. But while the work may be flawed, and the company may sometimes get it wrong, they fill a need. "What did you get out of the workshop?" I ask Bev. "Escape," she says.

Next year's show will go on. The subject has already been chosen: friendship. No controversy is expected. Goldmine at the Etcetera ThMtrs, London NW1 (0171-482 4857), until May 25. Jason Merrills and Sara Stewart mi Reviews Out Cry Lyric, Hammersmith Originally known as The Two Character Play, Tennessee Williams's Out Cry was die product of feverish obsession.

He constantly reworked it in the early seventies and even called it "my most beautiful play since But, although Timothy Walker's Cheek By Jowl production at the Lyric Hammersmith is clearly a labour oflove, it's hard to agree with Williams's judgment. It feels like a work that mattered more to its author than it does even to the most sympathetic observer. Williams transmutes his own predicament into that of a thespian brother and sister, Felice and Clare. On tour in some boondock hellhole, they wind up in an empty theatre abandoned by their company, their manager and eventually their audiences. But they persist in acting out a melodramatic play that seems to mirror their situation: they assume the role of immured and once-institutionalised siblings living in mortal fear of the outside world after an act of parental slaughter.

Fantasy and reality finally merge as this tortured twosome seek in art a resolution that has been denied them in life. You can see why the play meant a lot to Williams: it was the product of a hellish decade in which he suffered drug dependency, the death of a lover, committal to a psychiatric hospital and a declining artistic reputation. But desperation alone doesn't make for good drama, and Williams never creates a strong reality against which we can measure the siblings' lapse into desolate fantasy. If the piece is worth reviving, it is Largely as a vehicle for actors. And Walker's emotion-charged production, played otit against a meta-theatrkal Nick Ormerod design, gets two no-holds-barred perfor-mancra.

Sara Stewart lends Clare a distracted, wild-eyed sensuality that suggests she would one day make a fine Blanche Dubois, and Jason MerreOs as the muscular, bewigged Felice penwwrveJy embodies the more Mtringent tide ofWUhams that believed in the compulsion to work. But although the play has echoes of.