With flavours of existential Samuel Beckett play Waiting for Godot and Stanley Kubrick psychological thriller A Clockwork Orange, The Unseen is an intense examination of incarceration, inspired by the real-life stories of Russian freedom fighters imprisoned by the state.
The show’s grip tightens before you enter the theatre: as you walk into the Riverside Studios you pass the Faces of Russian Resistance exhibition, featuring dozens of real-life examples of people who have stood in opposition to Putin and been imprisoned, but the show transitions into something less grounded and way more stylistic: Craig Wright’s script is full of beautiful and intelligent word play.
We meet Wallace and Valdez, two prisoners in adjacent cells who’ve never seen each others’ faces. While Valdez might be in the early stages of some kind of breakdown, Wallace is something of a dreamer, talking high-brow philosophy and thinking up methods of escape.
The best part to watch (and surely to play) is the oppressor, simply named Captor, the prison guard torn between the dictatorial purpose of his work and the sympathetic tendencies he feels towards the inmates on a personal level.
Wright shows us how the types of people who end up in prison vary greatly from our impressions of an inmate, his characters acting as a study of their resilience and ability to find hope. That said, the wordplay and philosophising at points becomes too dense and feels hard to follow; at points you end up trying to work out the images Edward is conjuring rather than focusing on the horrible situation he’s in.
Simon Kenny’s convincing set puts you right where you don’t want to be: in the murky, claustrophobic innards of some horrid detention centre.
The Unseen plays at the Riverside Studios until 14 December