Review: 8 Hours There and Back at the Unity Theatre ****1/2

Prisons, prisoners and imprisonment are all particularly hot topics at present.

But in 8 Hours There and Back, Liverpool’s All Things Considered Theatre shifts the focus from the incarcerated to a demographic whose story is too often subsumed beneath the lurid headlines – the children at home caught up in the maelstrom and who are being failed by the judicial system.

The show, opening in Liverpool before touring venues in the North and Midlands which include a women’s prison, is the result of five years talking to young people who have a parent in prison and combines testimony, dance and projection into what is a quietly powerful piece of theatre which explores a difficult subject with real sensitivity – and without ever sliding into mawkishness.

It's sympathetically and seamlessly constructed by writer Sarah Hogarth who makes good use of young people’s voices in a narrative enhanced, under the direction of Emma Bramley, by judicious use of movement, and also of audio-visual content which is projected both onto a jagged wall which dominates upstage and on a series of geometric shapes of varying sizes which the three-strong cast manhandle to create a shifting set.

We meet the trio seemingly engaged in a bonding good-cop, bad-cop play acting game which, it becomes apparent, is one of the devices they use to deal with the curiosity of peers and the pressures of trying to create some kind of normality in the midst of fracturing of family units and the harsh glare of reflected notoriety.

The subject matter is tough, and it could be hard going, but Hogarth knows when to puncture the rawness with moments of dark humour and levity too, with the cast turning in nicely calibrated performances.

Above: Ruby (Olivia Lamb), Jake (Cal Connor) and Grace (Rio Star) in 8 Hours There and Back. Top: Grace, Ruby and Jake. Photos by Brian Roberts.

The title refers to the length of time it takes for one of the young people – Rio Star’s Grace - to travel with her younger brother to visit their mother in prison far away in Kent.

Here the siblings are treated by the system with a rough indifference to their age and vulnerability, and where Grace spends an awkward hour trying not to articulate her misery for fear of adding to their mother’s own.

It’s a different experience to Olivia Lamb’s Ruby, who maintains regular and seemingly equanimous contact with her father (who is not working in the Midlands as she’s initially told), while Jake (Cal Connor) brings yet another, more physically as well as mentally traumatic, story to the table.

These are children who, through no fault of their own, are tumbled into a bruising and confusing world which they are trying to navigate as best they can. And as the play explores, it doesn’t necessarily end for them or their family when their parent's sentence is served.

8 Hours There and Back is an important conversation, skilfully articulated and convincingly performed.

Catch it if you can at the Unity tonight. But if you miss it, there’s also another chance to see it when it arrives at the Arts Centre at Edge Hill University next month.