Who’s Afraid Of The Big Bar-L

Oran Mor, Glasgow

4/5

PHILIP DIFFER’S short play Who’s Afraid Of The Big Bar-L deserves wider exposure. Its one-off performance in Glasgow’s Oran Mor will surely not be enough to do it justice. 

Although the restrictions of writing it for a primarily prison audience are in evidence —  there are pre-show slides with definitions of prison slang and a short 45-minute running time — the show brings out the humour and the frustrations of prison life. 

Commissioned from production company FairPley by the prison’s retiring governor Derek McGill, it successfully marks the ambiguous status that Barlinnie has within the Scottish prison system, particularly in Glasgow.

Set in the future, when all the Scottish gaols have been closed and the Isle of Arran has been cleared to become a prison island, the play’s located in a London production studio where Joshua Wellington-Boot (Jack Mullen) is making a history of the “Big Hoose” with the help of ex-inmate Fudd McPie (Davie McKay) and prison guard Tam Robinson (Bruce Morton). 

As expected from a comedy writer, Differ’s script crackles with humour. But any idea of prison as a “holiday camp” is effectively trashed.

A glimpse of a way to extend the drama is suggested at the end as the guard and the inmate come face-to-face for the first time. 

The sense of two opposing insiders now forced together to face outsiders could be a powerful dramatic theme. 

The capacity audience loved it, stayed for the Q&A and kept the company occupied with questions that confirmed the dominant position of the prison in the folklore of Glasgow.    

Chris Bartter