Festival Theatre

The Prisoner

The Lyceum, Edinburgh

Eleanor Campanile

two stars

THE set for Brook’s first production in Scotland for years is sparse: rocks on stage, scattered straw, dead trees toward the back. This is classic Brook and emphasises inner struggle, rather than outward spectacle. Written and directed by Brook and collaborator Marie-Hélène Estienne, The Prisoner dramatises a memory from his time in Afghanistan, of a man condemned to sit facing a prison.

There are moments of beauty on stage. Actors sing, make bird noises off stage, helping excite the minimalistic set. The audience is set up as the prison he watches – undeniably clever, it deepened the question of punishment. We’re similar criminals wondering how to gain our own redemption while passing judgement on another.

The prisoner, Mavuso, killed his father having found him ‘in bed’ with his sister, Nora. He loved her ‘as father did’ and killed in jealousy.

This play explores sin and redemption. These are important issues but more crucial lessons are missed. Brook uses violence against a woman as vehicle for a man’s self-discovery, exploiting Nora’s experiences making them a stepping stone for more universal – more masculine – things.

Her feelings are neglected, any details (father raping her from age 13) are gleaned from discussions about Mavuso, then she is blamed and accepts that blame. And we know this isn’t criticism of attitudes towards women: it is respected Uncle Ezekiel who calls her selfish and gets her to leave.

Brook’s long career deserves celebration, but The Prisoner does not.

Eleanor Campanile is a pupil at Holyrood High School and this review was submitted as part of The Herald Young Critics Project with Edinburgh International Festival, as was the one below.

Festival Theatre

The Prisoner 

Lyceum

Rhiannon Falconer

THE PRISONER, by directed by Peter Brook, could possibly be known to me as the most infatuating piece of theatre to ever be put on. With themes of violence, insanity and rocky relationships, I was put through an emotional rollercoaster whilst intently watching.

Mabuso, also known as “The man on the hill” has been sitting outside a prison for a long time. It is unclear whether this was intended by Mabuso or if he was forced into it. We see that Mabuso murdered his father after he raped his sister and she has his child. This darkness within the play defiantly made the audience at times, feel quite uncomfortable. Its eerie atmosphere enticed the entire audience into fascination at the odd and frankly off-putting plotline.

The set was extremely minimalistic with only a few rocks and stick used throughout the performance. I found it confusing at times to recognise the time line of events and this was an obvious downfall to the theatre piece. What struck me about this was that it really made the audience use their brain and almost work about what was happening for themselves using their own interpretation.

To me, I felt like whilst Mabuso story was being told, it was all in his head. I felt as though Mabuso tried to cope through his time in prison by literally dehumanising his fellow in mates as the sticks and rocks on stage. The moment when I was most dumbfounded was when the fourth wall was broken and the sections within the audience were cells in the prison. For me, this made it feel as though we were watching an animal in a zoo which was very unsettling to me. This performances biggest downfall was its lack of showing the time of day and the setting of where they were at each given moment and this made the play slightly hard to follow. However, Peter Brook defiantly managed to create a strong sense of confusion which I don’t think was a bad thing in any way. I would recommend seeing this if you can as there can be many interpretations of what was happening within it and I would be very interested to hear them.