Follow Me

'Follow Me' opens curiously with a bespectacled woman putting a jigsaw puzzle together whilst jazz standards play in the background. She is Ruth Ellis, the last woman in Britain to be sentenced to death, and she is about to be hanged.

Her case was one of a number of actually or possibly unsound judgements which lead to the abolition of capital punishment in the United Kingdom. Ellis was also among the last to be executed by Albert Pierrepoint, whose own curious career as the most well-known executioner in Britain was the subject of a recent film.

The Wildman Room provides a suitably claustrophobic space for an exploration of these two individuals, and the circumstances which have brought them to such proximity. Although both characters exist within the confines of the prison in which Ellis is to meet her fate, they do not encounter until the final moments of the play, spending the best part of an hour in anticipation of this, inventing each other like putative lovers imagining their first assignation.

Sex and death are very much on the minds of Albert Pierrepoint (Ross Gurney-Randall) and Ruth Ellis (Beth Fitzgerald), although much of what they may have wished from life remains hidden, most especially from themselves.

Ellis was charged with and convicted of the murder of her lover, David Blakely, and the case became notorious, partly through the public outcry which ensued and a sense of injustice which has endured even though a judicial review of the case upheld the original verdict as recently as 2003.

Fitzgerald's Ellis is perhaps a shade too composed and sure of herself for much of the play, although this may be in part at least to make her late breakdown, when it is announced that there will be no reprieve as anticipated, the more credible. Ross Gurney-Randall's Pierrepoint is solidly conceived and delivered, although his character's journey is perhaps less extensive and demanding than Fitzgerald's.

Unavoidably, perhaps, 'Follow Me' is not simply a meditation on a single controversial judgement, but a consideration of the whole question of both the morality of capital punishment and the methods used to impose it in one country at one particular time. It may not be to the taste of a) those of a squeamish disposition (there is much on the mechanics of execution), b) those uninterested in recent history (there's a lot of reality to digest in 75 minutes), c) those who imagine there's nothing wrong with capital punishment in the United States that a few more gallows and hanging judges couldn't cure.

Although (and perhaps because) we spend so long imaging Ellis' and Pierrepoint's brief encounter its actual moment falls rather flat. It's difficult to imagine an alternative, and what is, is perfectly well managed, but nonetheless feels like a script resolutely painting toward the last remaining corner.

Nonetheless, this is a show which does not disappoint in any other respect, and deserves the attention of the thoughtful audiences it's sure to get.

Times: 12.15-13.30

Dates: August 2-27 (not Monday 13th)