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Published on 7/23/08
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In 2002, The Exonerated won accolades for depicting the plight of the wrongly imprisoned. The Castle can make no such claim; it is conceived and performed by four former inmates who collectively spent 70 years in jail and admit to their misdeeds. These ex-convicts relive their journeys to hell and back in a piece of theater vérité that celebrates and promotes the Fortune Society, an organization whose Manhattan residence, the Castle, helps prisoners adjust to life beyond bars.
Anguish and healing are palpable in the words of the three men and one woman recounting their crimes and punishments onstage. They aren’t trained actors, which both heightens the emotion and hampers the pace. Some stories are staggering: Torres’s childhood was filled with abuse; his mother’s acquaintances would make him fight his brother when the boys were five and six. Soft-spoken Ramos feared returning to society after serving three decades for murder; he entered prison in the ’70s and came out last year, at age 47. Describing lives left vacant by drugs, Harrigan and Donovan weep openly.
Since the prison-reform Fortune Society sprung from an Off Broadway drama director David Rothenberg produced 40 years ago, the theater is a fitting place for these tales about repairing broken lives. At a time when rehabilitation and second chances aren’t popular philosophies of justice, this uneven but still effective production proves that there’s hope for redemption.
