Working Progress Collective is ‘a Midlands-born theatre company, making theatre for, by and with working class communities’. Sessions, written and directed by Sam Bates, at Zoo Playground, is a fine example of how that mix can make for topical, relevant and powerful theatre.
Topical, relevant and powerful theatre
The new government’s assessment of the situation they inherited, is that our prison system is in crisis, because the courts choose to incarcerate more offenders than can be accommodated in what are notoriously schools for criminals; rehabilitation is a more positive option.
George (Adam Halcro) managed to avoid a custodial sentence. Instead he was given community service for his violent crimes, partly because he was only 17 at the time. Another condition of his sentence was to be placed under the supervision of a care worker for weekly counselling sessions.
He turns up for his first session with David (Naytanael Benjamin) and the contrast between the two could not be more pronounced. George is hyper-active, aggressive and foul-mouthed. David has heard it all before. He sits calmly and listens to the tirade until a term of homophobic abuse slips out and he puts his foot down. George is surprised, but begins to realise that he’s not going to get it all his own way. As the sessions progress he becomes more relaxed and we learn of his troubled background, but also his talents as a footballer. We also discover that the otherwise seemingly untroubled David has demons of his own. They emerge gradually and a subtle change in the balance of power occurs.
Halcro’s performance is packed with energy and anger. Some scenes feel violent but he is no threat and also engages in quieter more reflexive moments until his final magnificent outpouring of emotion, which leaves him shaking. Halcro treads a calmer path as befitting his role. He is softly spoken, compassionate and understanding as he calmly elicits responses from George. But he too has his moment when everything he has been bottling up finally has to be released.
Session runs the gamut of modern social issues: homophobia, substance and sexual abuse, toxic masculinity, trauma and violence are all met head on, often with the offensive language that accompanies them. It is certainly a play for our day and makes a powerful case-study contribution to the debate about reforming young offenders, as early release programmes are announced. It’s a work of fiction rooted in contemporary reality.
