Search

Saved articles

You have not yet added any article to your bookmarks!

Browse articles

GDPR Compliance

We use cookies to ensure you get the best experience on our website. By continuing to use our site, you accept our use of cookies, Privacy Policy, and Terms of Service.

Ordinary Decent Criminal

 
Alec Martin Review by Alec Martin 4 Published: 3 Aug 2025 Summerhall Show Dates: 31 Jul 2025-25 Aug 2025

How do you smuggle a spark of revolution into a place designed to stamp it out? Mark Thomas answers with swagger and pathos in Ordinary Decent Criminal, a visceral, single-handed tour of the life of Frankie, a campus idealist turned recovering junkie and finally a Strangeways inmate. Thomas shape-shifts through a madcap rogues’ gallery – damaged ex-Para Bron, irreverent IRA sympathiser Belfast Tony, and jittery jailbirds who wouldn’t look out of place in the toughest prison wing – while keeping Frankie’s bruised humanity centre stage.

By the time Frankie finds a shaky sense of purpose among society’s forgotten, the audience gets behind every beat.

Under Charlotte Bennett’s taut direction, the staging is as spare as Frankie’s cell: a grid of steel-grey flats, a single unforgiving toilet for a seat, and a wash of angled light that suggests both interrogation rooms and midnight lock-ups. Lydia Denno’s judicious design choices leave acres of negative space, letting Thomas’s physical storytelling punch through while hinting at the emptiness around him. Elena Peña underscores each segue with low industrial hums and the occasional door-slam reverb, keeping our nerves on alert without ever drowning the narrative. Against this backdrop, we are given a powerful central performance and, if Thomas did trip over a line or two on the afternoon of this review, it barely registered against the overall swagger.

Ed Edwards’s text balances bruising political critique with gut-level storytelling. Frankie’s slide from righteous anger to drug-numbed despair feels authentic, yet the play never wallows. Instead, it trumpets resilience: in a newly rebuilt Strangeways, hope is the contraband passed from bunk to bunk, and Thomas gives us a taste of its bittersweet thrill.

If the polemics occasionally shout a shade too loud, the production’s heart remains generous – more call-to-arms than lecture. By the time Frankie finds a shaky sense of purpose among society’s forgotten, the audience gets behind every beat. Ordinary Decent Criminal may be staged behind metaphoric bars, but it leaves you fired up to pick the lock.

Related to this article:

Location:

Performances

The Blurb:

Set following the Strangeways Prison Riot, meet recovering addict Frankie, played by renowned political comedian Mark Thomas as he enters the brave new world of a liberal prison experiment. None of Frankie's fellow convicts are what they seem. In the most unexpected of places he discovers: the revolution is not dead. It's just sleeping. A new play from the writer of Fringe First-winning England & Son and A Political History of Smack & Crack, Ed Edwards and Mark Thomas tell a tale of freedom, revolution and messy love. Directed by Charlotte Bennett.