Edinburgh Fringe 2025 reviews: Ordinary Decent Criminal / Insiders

Ordinary Decent Criminal, Summerhall ★★★★★ 

Frankie learnt a thing or two about the police and how they work from his years as an activist. Fighting for crucial political causes, however, never seemed at odds with a sideline in drug-dealing – which, when the authorities got wind that the chocolate bars he was importing from Spain weren’t exactly Cadbury’s, earned him a few years inside. Once banged up, however, Frankie finds himself immersed in prison feuds, struggles for power, conflicts and unexpected connections.

Ed Edwards’s vivid, vibrant solo play fits its performer – comedy legend, activist, writer and actor Mark Thomas – like a glove, and so snugly that you might find yourself wondering how much of Thomas there is in the likeable rogue Frankie. But certain biographical similarities aside, Edwards’s quicksilver text and Charlotte Bennett’s incisive direction lean heavily into Thomas’s naturally urgent, nervy performance, leaping from one side of Lydia Denno’s riot barrier-strewn set to the other, and similarly swapping his characters and storylines deftly and vividly, confiding their accounts as if his life depended on it. There’s Belfast Tony and his memories of war in Northern Ireland. And DeNiro, who runs his own sinister prison empire. And there’s young Kenny, inside for a brutal attack, but the most delicate of the lot of them.

Edwards – himself an ex-offender – blends brutality and genuine pathos in his accounts of these damaged figures, while never missing the opportunity for a gag or knowing remark. And he traces a thoroughly convincing story arc, setting the characters off against each other before working their stories together as the show reaches its inevitable conclusion. However dark their backstories or their threats, Edwards treats his colourful cast with dignity and compassion, and Thomas, too, stresses the humanity behind even the most menacing figures here.

Ordinary Decent Criminal is a breathtaking, often breathless achievement, a show that manages to appal, to amuse and to provoke. And bringing it all to vivid life is Thomas’s brilliantly committed and thoroughly convincing performance.

• Until 25 August, before touring to Exeter, Plymouth, Brighton, Canterbury, Oxford, Scarborough, Stockton-on-Tees, Selby. Coventry, Leeds, Chichester, Nottingham, Manchester and York from October to December

Insiders, St John’s Church ★★★★

If there’s one thing that the high-energy Ordinary Decent Criminal is lacking, however, it’s quiet reflection, even… well, boredom. Not that Insiders is in any way a boring show. Instead, it dares to stare unflinchingly at the more mundane realities of prison life, and admit that for a lot of the time, the biggest issue facing prisoners is simply… well, that there’s not much going on.

The show has deeply authentic origins. Put together by Bethany Christian Trust’s Creative Expressions group, it’s based entirely on testimonies, memories and first-hand accounts of 14 serving prisoners in HMP Shotts, halfway between Edinburgh and Glasgow, later elaborated into a script and storyline by the team’s actors. The result might be rather more softly spoken than the compelling, non-stop action of Ordinary Decent Criminal, but it’s no less powerful for that.

Danny wanted to be a personal trainer, but applied his strength more brutally after the death of his mother. Craig is coping with life inside by finding God and meticulously arranging his Lynx Africa shower gel bottles. Richard, meanwhile, used to have a season ticket to Scottish Opera, but can no longer indulge his passion for high culture after a drugs bust got him locked away.

Sharing descriptions of their cells and their everyday lives, the three men’s hopes and back stories slowly intermingle as vulnerabilities are admitted, advantages taken, and a sense of shared humanity slowly accepted.

Insiders’ overall story arc might be on the simple side, but its emotional resonance is no less potent for that. Its aim is clearly to remind us of the humanity of these three damaged figures, and it does that very powerfully through the cast’s vivid, sometimes larger-than-life performances. Sam Rowe (pictured above, image by Todd Weller) – who led the entire project – makes for a muscular, apparently confident Danny, resigned to his long stretch inside, and reluctant to engage with violent prison politics. Garry Sweeney is a fish out of water as middle-class Richard, though his eagerness to help his fellow inmates shines through. Sean Connor makes for a powerfully poignant Craig, struggling for any feelings of control, and ultimately seeming ever more adrift as life outside the prison throws yet more problems his way. Singer/guitarist Michael McMillan provides some nicely judged musical interludes.

It’s a powerful, intensely focused show that deserves to be more widely seen – just the kind of thing that would make a thought-provoking A Play, a Pie and a Pint offering, perhaps. And despite the resonant acoustics of St John’s Church on Lothian Road sometimes muddying the three men’s narrations, it’s a memorable insight into scarred and traumatised figures that we may seldom encounter.

• Until 16 August

• The Edinburgh Fringe runs until 25 August 
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