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The Shawshank Redemption

Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh

Four stars

 

When Stephen King set out to write an old time prison break yarn in the early 1980s, the result was Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption,. This hard boiled novella about life on the inside for ex banker Andy Dufresne after being convicted for murdering his wife and her lover was narrated by Ellis ‘Red’ Redding, a lifer who has become the go-to guy for anything his fellow inmates might need to make the time inside a little easier. With Andy thrown in the deep end of a corrupt late 1940s institution led from the top by prison warden Stammas, what follows over almost thirty years is a story of finding freedom against all the odds.

 

Much of this will be familiar from Frank Darabont’s 1994 sleeper hit film version, but it was to King’s original that Owen O’Neill and Dave Johns returned to when they adapted it for the stage back in 2009. This return of David Esbjornson’s fleshed out production for this latest UK tour sees Joe McFadden play Andy as a quiet hero, whose way with numbers sees him cook the warden’s books while navigating his way around the prison pecking order to survive what looks increasingly like a never ending stretch.

 

As with King’s book, it is Red who gives things voice as he frames the action while becoming a key part of it. This is brought to life by a charismatic Ben Onwukwe, with Bill Ward a conniving slimeball as Stammas. This makes for an intense affair that sees Andy bullied and brutalised by prisoners and guards alike before he attempts to liberate his new friends with Rita Hayworth movies and setting up a library. A little knowledge, it seems, really does go a long way, especially with a poster of Hayworth sourced by Red on the black market to brighten up Andy’s cell.

 

With able support from the rest of the twelve-strong cast, the changing times are marked by little musical bridges that moves from 1940s swing to 1960s protest songs that suggests some kind of justice is coming beyond the pains of confinement. In Andy and Red’s case, this takes things beyond the pictures on their wall towards hope, freedom, and making the system pay in a slow burning study of what it means to truly escape.


The Herald, January 22nd 2025

 

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