Shook
Southwark Playhouse, London, then touring

A recurrent debate is the correct balance, in the prison system, between punitive removal of liberty and re-education for release.

An unusual incarceration classroom is the setting for Shook, a debut by Samuel Bailey, this year’s winner of the New Writing Prize run by the enterprising British-Irish Papatango Theatre Company.

The play features three late teenage in-mates – Cain, Riyad, Jonjo – who were responsible for either children or pregnancies before they were locked up. Once a week, in preparation for eventual release, they attend fatherhood classes run by Grace, a thirty-something health visitor, who teaches skills from the everyday (feeding, nappies) to the nightmare: cardiopulmonary resuscitation. They clumsily practise on plastic dolls.