Clean Break is the company behind the recent Arcola production of it felt empty when the heart went at first but it is alright now. It returns to Soho Theatre to offer a second run of This Wide Night: the play was originally produced here, and then went on a nationwide tour - receiving, in the meantime, the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize 2009.

The women protagonists of This Wide Night are two, Marie and Lorraine; they are friends who met in prison, and who now have to face life on the outside, each of them with their respective doses of delusions, resentment and emotional rawness. In spite of a twenty-year age gap, and in spite of their occasional lack of tolerance for the other, the play gradually exposes their connection, and in so doing gathers emotional momentum.

Many of the names involved in this production coincide with those of it felt empty… : director Lucy Morrison, designer Chloe Lamford, production manager Ali Beale, sound designer Becky Smith and lighting designer Anna Watson. In parts, the evening has a detectable atmosphere that will be recognised by those who had been at the Arcola, but overall this play transmits a much different feel, which is held and framed by Chloë Moss’ unflinching dialogue. It is through this dialogue, and through the beautiful, touching acting of Maureen Beattie and Zawe Ashton, that the production finds a balance between exposure and restraint. And while the circumstances behind Lorraine’s and Marie’s stories are not necessarily new, one having had to give up her son and now being estranged from him, the other having been the victim of a bad boyfriend, this does not seem to matter, because it is not, after all, central to Moss’ play. What is central, instead, is the vulnerability of the women, and yet how dangerous they can seem, even to us who have witnessed Marie’s fight-or-flight response at a mere knock on the door.

While Marie and Lorraine are no longer officially in prison, they are still, de facto, trapped. There is never any exchange between what happens inside and outside their flimsy front door - and they are aware of their entrapment, which includes the impossibility of imagining to ever have anything better, or less hurtful, of this, and which makes them invisible as they cry behind the opaque plastic walls of a bedsit shower. Lamford’s set, here as the Arcola, is a self-contained landscape of resigned hopes and ambitions, made of fragile-looking plastic furniture and linoleum that conveys all the tragedy of resignation. It contributes, together with the sharp writing and the acting, to create a production where humanity and empathy overcome cliché.

Till 5 December 2009