Campaigning theatre is reimagined with astonishing force in Woodhill. Tracing vulnerable men who took their lives in prison, writer Matt Woodhead and choreographer Alexzandra Sarmiento have created a verbatim documentary that finds devastating physical form.
HMP Woodhill houses young men outside Milton Keynes – “a box of souls on our front door”, says a local. Even within the British prison system, it has a notoriously poor record of care. Built on 70 interviews, their hushed and haunted words voiced by actors, Woodhead weaves the stories of three Woodhill prisoners. Kevin Scarlett, Stephen Farrar and Chris Carpenter, all with severe mental health issues, were each found dead in their cells between 2013 and 2018. Their families have been dogged in their pursuit of answers.
The environment in this production by Lung theatre company, is a dank warehouse, lit in ashen, sickly yellow. The relatives, embodied with undeviating conviction by Tyler Brazao, Marina Climent and Miah Robinson, move cardboard boxes from one metal shelf to another, just as they shuttle unresolved grief, remnants of loss and memories.
The surging soundscape by composer Sami El-Enany and sound designer Owen Crouch rests on repetition because the relatives keep asking the same questions, while losses recur without redress. Chris Otim’s ghost scatters a handful of paper for each lost prisoner and derisively mimes the version of the dead from bland official records.
Woodhead’s witnesses indict a morally bankrupt prison system, from corruption to a lack of clinical provision, education or addiction treatment. “We spent so long trying to keep the men safe from each other,” says one guard, “we forgot to keep them safe from themselves.”
Sarmiento’s precise, eloquent gestures channel the juddering distress. Tension overwhelms these bodies: apart from Robinson’s fluttering arms, summoning a gentle youngster, there are no soft movements. Sinews stiffen like rods, hands beat against doors. People fold backwards, poleaxed by distress at grim news. The dancers hold people at the very worst moment of their lives.
Woodhill is an undeniably relentless piece with barely a sliver of hope. But the ambitious form for this urgent material honours the dead and those who fight for change.
• This article was amended on 11 August 2023 to clarify that the composer is Sami El-Enany.
At Summerhall, Edinburgh, until 27 August, then Shoreditch Town Hall, London, 20 September-7 October and North Wall Arts Centre, Oxford, 19–20 October.
