The UK criminal justice system is broken. No one knows this better than Glasshouse Theatre, former prison officers and the creators behind the hugely compelling new play Cell Outs. Ella and Harriet (Ella Church and Harriet Troup, playing themselves) two optimistic, motivated recent graduates sign up for a scheme that will offer them each a Masters degree in rehabilitation via a program called Breakthrough. Out of 100,000 applicants, they are two of 50 chosen. In a bubbly musical number, they imagine using their empathy, education and young-millennial nuance to turn lives around from the comfort of their well-furnished offices, like the social justice girl bosses they are.
They are in for the rudest of awakenings when, after only six weeks of training, they are dropped into two dangerous, understaffed facilities as standard Prison Officers - or POs - a role that, ironically and alarmingly, requires no qualifications to obtain. Church is assigned to a women’s prison, Troup to a men’s (for parts of the show they bedazzled uniforms with ‘HM Pussy’ and ‘HM Prick’ emblazoned on the back). The two have a joking refrain about being ‘lambs to slaughter’; we hear a delicate audio recording of one of their mom’s concerns about her daughter working in a prison. But nothing can prepare them for their all-consuming new careers.
At first, they are taken aback by the veteran POs’ sexist and racist remarks, and the constant violence and addiction. But slowly, over the course of their time there, they become more accustomed to their surroundings - for better and mostly, for worse. They chat about reality TV with the prisoners and compare notes on their new lives by phone on long night shifts. They try to bring acting workshops to their respective prisons.
But in the hopelessly warped world they’ve entered, POs find themselves cut both ways: if they don’t care about their wards, they hurt the system. But if they do care, the system hurts them. As the endless parade of violence, addiction, and self-harm become their normal, they battle their own anger, despondency and PTSD (the story is bookended by Church testifying about finding the body of a prisoner who hanged herself).
Cell Outs shouldn’t work on paper. It sounds like a show that would be destined to be either unrelentingly bleak or humorous in bad taste only. But what Glasshouse does is perfectly match the tone to the material. It helps that both Troup and Church are phenomenal actors. There are some brilliant character sketches, from an oblivious drama student friend complaining about the trauma of her degree, to a try-hard fellow PO. The two leads gradual loss of innocence - difficult to convey in a relatively short two-hander - really comes across.
There’s never a dull moment in Cell Outs, with interspersed voiceovers from anonymous interviewees who still work in the prison system, compelling musical numbers that range from comic relief to blistering protest, and a deeply sincere paean to female friendship throughout.
At one point, discussing strip searches, Troup remarks,“Don’t you think it’s pretty fucked that a lot of stuff we do in the prison life, if we were to do that in the street we’d get arrested straight off?”
“Maybe we’re not the lambs,” Church says. “Maybe we’re running the slaughterhouse.”
“Nah.” replies Troup. “We’re just the meatpackers.”
In terms of an astute portrait of governmental failure shot through with gallows humour, it rivals Adam Kay’s runaway bestseller This Is Going To Hurt - may it find just as big an audience. It’s an electrifying piece of work.