Full Cast Set For LIFERS at Southwark Playhouse
Performances run Wednesday 1st to Saturday 25th October.
The full cast has been announced for Synergy Theatre Project’s production of Evan Placey’s new play Lifers at Southwark Playhouse.
Joining the previously announced Peter Wight (Hot Fuzz/Early Doors) as Lenny are James Backway (Jacob Marley in A Christmas Carol – A Ghost Story / Birmingham Rep/World On Fire – Amazon) as Mark, Sam Cox (Richard III and The Count of Monte Cristo) as Norton, Ricky Fearon (Julius Caesar RSC, Nine Night NT) as Baxter and Mona Goodwin (Grenfell: In the Words of Survivors, NT, Sex Education, Netflix) as Sonya in Evan Placey’s powerful and deeply human look at ageing behind bars.
Inside the walls of HMP Drummond, Baxter, Norton and Lenny pass the time with poker, banter, and the kind of gallows humour only lifers can muster.
When Lenny’s body starts to give out, prison officer Mark keeps an eye on him. What begins as a duty of care slowly becomes an unexpected friendship, exposing the cracks in a system built to punish, not to support.
Darkly funny and unflinchingly honest, Lifers challenges what we think we know about crime, punishment, and redemption. Do some crimes make a second chance impossible? And when the world moves on without you, what does justice really mean?
Evan Placey is a Canadian-British playwright and screenwriter who lives in London, UK. His debut play Mother of Him won the inaugural RBC National Playwriting Award at the Tarragon Theatre in Toronto, the King’s Cross Award in the UK, and the Samuel French Canadian Play Award in the USA. The play went on to be produced internationally and was adapted for BBC Radio. It was revived at the Park Theatre, London, and the Korean production opened earlier this year at the National Theatre Company of Korea. His other plays include Girls Like That (Birmingham REP, West Yorkshire Playhouse & Plymouth Theatre Royal; Synergy/Unicorn); Peter Pan (Rose Theatre); Orange Polar Bear (Birmingham REP/National Theatre Company of Korea); Keepy Uppy (UK tour), Consensual (NYT/West End), Pronoun (National Theatre), WiLd! (UK tour), Scarberia (YPT, Toronto & York Theatre Royal, UK), Holloway Jones (Synergy/Unicorn), How was it for you? (Unicorn), and Banana Boys (Hampstead). Jekyll & Hyde (NYT/West End, Birmingham REP & National Theatre) was recently revived by The National Theatre for a UK tour. Evan’s awards include: Jugend Theatre Preis Baden-Wurttemberg (Germany), Scenic Youth prize (France), Brian Way Award, Royal Society of Literature’s Literature Matters Award and the Writers’ Guild Award for Best Play for Young Audiences (all UK). For television he has written for Soulmates (AMC/Amazon), The Bay (ITV) and The Tattooist of Auschwitz (Sky). Evan was recently named on the Brit List.
Esther Baker is the Artistic Director of Synergy Theatre Project. Established in 2000, Synergy Theatre Project is an award-winning theatre company working with prisoners and ex-prisoners, producing shows in both theatre and within prisons, delivering education projects for young people and new writing initiatives to develop playwrights in prison. Theatre credits include Providers (Brixton House), He Said She Said (Kiln Theatre),The Special Relationship (Soho Theatre), There is a Field (Theatre503), Blackout (Ovalhouse), Homecomings new writing Festival (Theatre503), Evan Placey’s Girls Like That (Unicorn Theatre), Cape and Burning Bird (Unicorn Theatre), Stephen Adly Guirgis’s Jesus Hopped the ‘A’ Train (Trafalgar Studios); Shelagh Stephenson’s The Long Road (Soho Theatre); Elmina’s Kitchen (HMP Brixton); On the Waterfront (Wimbledon Studio Theatre) and Burn and Someone to Watch Over Me (Southwark Playhouse).
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