Inside

Apparently, the new austerity means that Rochester Prison won't allow Jim Pope and Philip Osment's powerful drama back to play in the prison where it was developed. That's sadly short-sighted. This funny and streetwise play gets under the skin of seven incarcerated dads who reluctantly join a prison drama group. If played on home turf, it would surely reach out to more.

What's striking about the whole production is its pent-up force. Midnight pipe-banging is a cliché of prison drama and life. But here, night is the time where banged-up hopes, fears and insults are yelled out in the dark. 'It's like I'm not fucking there,' howls Aswan (Darren Douglas), unable to reach his pregnant girlfriend, who won't reply to his letters.

In the cold artificial light of day , illiterate hard-man Brownie (Segun Olaiya) tries to break up the drama group by whooping with scorn every time anyone's improvisation gets personal. Flicking his keep-fit skipping rope around his tattooed limbs at whip-speed, he's a scarily pumped-up figure - and his odd comradeship with the group's only white guy, Tommy, a skinny deep-thinker whom everyone else suspects is a nonce, is one of the most subtle and mysterious relationships in a play which can be a bit formulaic.

The moral message is hard to miss. But the authentic acting compels. As the characters quicken with unexpected life and complexity, you realise that the power of the drama group is equal to the hopes of its comically well-intentioned coach, Liam (Jim Pope in a role he's often played for real). 'Inside' channels the prisoners' hopes to give their own kids a better future than the one their fathers condemned them to. Writer Osment sidles up to that realisation, with a lot of humour and resistance along the way. But when it comes it feels fully deserved and is all the more moving for having been earned the hard way.