Audiences are flocking to see the stage adaptation of Stephen King’s famous prison story this week. Just the ticket for a bit of escapism – and the odd lump in the throat. Cultured. North East‘s David Whetstone reports back on The Shawshank Redemption.
A scene from The Shawshank Redemption. Photo by Jack Merriman
A masterful story by the master storyteller provides a vividly and enjoyably grim contrast to the panto, tinsel ‘n’ turkey jollities recently departed for another year.
Here we are in Shawshank Penitentiary, a tough place designed to have nothing whatsoever to commend it to any person on the planet.
It’s among its resident unfortunates (deserving unfortunates, some might say) that the story – set in the 1940s and first told by Stephen King in his 1982 novella and then in the hit film of 1994 – unfolds in a stage version that should satisfy fans of earlier manifestations.
It begins with a juddering clang, a metallic sound signalling despair around the world and over the ages, and then the prison is laid before us in all its perfectly realised nastiness.
The floors are hard, the warders are harder (and armed) and the dull and mossy ambience mimics that of an aquarium that has been neglected for a long time.
Our guide is Ellis Redding, ‘Red’, a man you’d turn to in such a place simply because he doesn’t wear the look of a pervert or psychopath.
Over the years he has developed a protective shell and the useful knack of being able to procure whatever his fellow inmates fancy – along with a seasoned inability to get parole.
Ben Onwukwe as Red in The Shawshank Redemption. Photo by Jack Merriman
Ben Onwukwe is excellent as Red, brilliantly channelling the affable but guarded wisdom displayed by Morgan Freeman in the film.
It is only natural that new inmate Andy Dufresne, a character who reveals himself only gradually, should turn to Red before too long, although his plea for a hammer to extricate interesting rocks is perhaps the first indication that we’re in fantasy rather than docu-drama territory.
Joe Absolom captures Andy’s enigmatic and singular intelligence and his disconcerting ability to survive in a place where such a trait would normally be stamped on or worse (rape is not airbrushed from the story).
It’s a good cast, the actors deftly conveying the individuality behind and beneath the enforced uniformity.
There’s old Brooksie (Kenneth Jay) with his fussy management of the library trolley and Rooster whose laugh grates even more than the sound of a cell door slamming (well done, Leigh Jones, for keeping that up night after night).
We soon come to realise that the governor, Warden Stammas (Mark Heenehan with an excellent portrayal of flawed authority), and his staff are as corruptible as those in their charge.
Andy Dufresne, blessed with a brain, plays all of them like an angler plays a fish, making fellow cons and the uniformed thugs overseeing them dependent on his bureaucratic skills.
The cast of The Shawshank Redemption. Credit: Jack-Merriman
He knows about form-filling, he knows about tax and all are happy to profit. He can get young serial burglar Tommy Williams (Coulter Dittman) through an exam. Can it get him out of Shawshank, though?
You’ll get no spoilers here, although many of those who packed the Theatre Royal on Tuesday night seemed to know the story extremely well. You could have heard a pin drop.
The ending is wonderful, justifying the ‘redemption’ of the title. There may have been lumps in throats.
There was in mine and it arrived there despite the uncomfortable knowledge that away from this testosterone-fuelled environment are a lot of unseen female victims.
They might profess themselves older and wiser men than when they were banged up, but even Red and old Brooksie languish in the knowledge that they killed their wives.
The only one who protests his innocence to the end is Andy although his wife was murdered too.
Well performed, well directed by David Esbjornson, a tough story well told.
A nod to the writers, too, Owen O’Neill and Tyneside’s Dave Johns whose own adaptation of I, Daniel Blake (in which he starred on screen) is opening at Northern Stage at the end of May. Well done, lads.
The Shawshank Redemption runs until Saturday, January 21. Tickets from the box office – call 0191 2327010 – or the Theatre Royal website.