A Night In The Clink The Clink restaurant in HMP Cardiff

★★★★★

THREE prisoners are pondering life after they are released and the circumstances which led to them being locked up.

They’ve got jobs on The Clink restaurant in Cardiff Prison which they hope will lead to greater things beyond the prison walls.

How better to tell their stories than directly to the clientele as they eat dinner inside?

Theatre is at its most powerful when it transports you to the minds and places it is portraying and that is literally what this new production from Papertrail, supported by Sherman Theatre, does.

A Night In The Clink takes place at The Clink restaurant in HMP Cardiff.

The production is inspired by stories of people working there in the last phase of their sentence.

Their stories are combined into the characters of Marky (Siôn Pritchard), Ricky (Aled ap Steffan) and Justin (Oliver Wood) who tell their hopes, dreams and experiences to the audience sitting at tables while they are served a meal created by The Clink team, writers Matthew Bulgo, Branwen Davies and Travey Harris collected stories from inmates creating a production, directed by Bridget Keehan, which draws sympathy without glossing over an undercurrent of violence and emotional deprivation which brought the characters here.

Justin dreams of selling coffee from a van while travelling, Marky is desperate to see his wife and Ricky is scared of going it alone.

As their hopes for release seem tenuous – a coffee shop tells Justin they’ll only give him work as a pot washer, Mark’s wife fails to visit and Ricky regrets the way he treated his supportive mamgu – a certain darkness prevails.

As the diners stare at dessert plates there’s a realisation of bleak reality. But this is, at heart, an uplifting piece about change. The Clink Restaurant has given the characters some hope for better things.

“It’ll never happen,” muses Marky.

“It might,” Justin tells him, as the lights dim.