REVIEW: Sinners Club (The Other Room, Cardiff)

Sinners Club is a gig. It's not a play, it's a gig. But then, it's also more than "just" a gig. It's an immersive experience, a theatrical spectacle which transports the audience to another place, another time, another society.

Sinners Club places the audience in a recording studio where The Bad Mothers are rehearsing and recording some songs for their latest live album. This concept album is inspired by the life of Rhyl-born Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be hanged in Britain, on July 13th, 1955 (the last man was in 1964). Ellis was just 28 years old, and was convicted of shooting dead her lover, the racing driver David Blakely, on Easter Sunday that year. Ellis gave herself up to police, took full responsibility for the murder, and conducted herself with grace and courtesy during the proceeding trial.

Ellis's story is ripe for dramatic interpretation. It's been done on TV (1980), film (1985) and stage (2007), but Lucy Rivers's production is the first time it's been done in such a stylistically broad, cabaret mould. Ellis's story involves nude modelling, prostitution, illegal abortion, domestic violence and, ultimately, homicide. How Rivers chooses to interpret all this sin and iniquity is through the power of song, as the lead singer of The Bad Mothers.

Play & Silence (The Other Room, Cardiff)

Three people incarcerated inside giant urns stand side by side on the postage stamp-sized stage at The Other Room. The trio are never seen at the same time, but spot-lit in quick succession as they deliver their rapid-fire lines. It's an odd set-up, but one which playwright Samuel Beckett was very particular about. Indeed, to change Beckett's specifications for Play would pretty much destroy the entire thing.

But while there may be three actors on stage (in their urns), Play actually has a cast of four, because stage manager Steffi Pickering has just as important a part to play - perhaps even more so - than the thespians. As each actor has to be in the spotlight as they say their lines - and as the lines are delivered with such uncompromising rapidity, one after the other, spilling back and forth between the three - it means Steffi has her work cut out making sure she keeps up with the spot. Beckett specified it must be one spotlight moving between the three, not three spotlights fading up and down.