Please Do Not Touch is very good indeed. Written by Casey Bailey and performed by Tijan Sarr, it tells the story of Mason, a young black British man who makes TikTok videos highlighting Britain’s colonial past. One day, he records a piece about a portrait of a Victorian landowner with a young slave boy in a metal collar. As he starts to leave, he sees a carved wooden Somali comb in a display case. The case is unlocked and he takes out the comb. He is immediately apprehended by security, charged with theft and sent to prison.
The rest of the play then covers his experience in gaol. At first, he can’t see how he will survive, but gradually, he learns to cope. One of the prison guards introduces Mason to the library and suggests he reads and writes to occupy his time. This proves to be a lifeline. Reading teaches him to better understand his situation, and writing poetry enables him to express himself. The play doesn’t duck the frustration Mason feels or the injustice done to him, but it shows how he develops the resources required to survive them.
Tijan Sarr slips effortlessly in and out of different characters as he tells Mason’s story: Davis the prison guard, Marsh his cellmate and his mum and dad, and we are never in any doubt where he is or who is speaking. There are some moments when the words get lost, but this is a commanding and authoritative performance.
Gail Babb’s staging is superb. I have seen several shows in the Belgrade studio theatre this year, but I have never seen the space used as creatively or as effectively as this. Miriam Nabarro’s set consists of a square rostrum which Sarr drags backwards and forwards on metal rails as required to reconfigure the space. There are vertical rods in each corner so the set resembles a giant display cabinet containing Mason, like the one from which Mason took the Somali comb.
Kayodeine’s sound design runs almost continuously throughout show, at times as a low, atmospheric rumble, at other times bursting out into music and occasional pre-recorded voiceovers. Gillian Tan’s lighting consists mostly of blocks of white light which divide up the space, and Keiren Hamilton-Amos’s movement is precise and effective. Sometimes, issue-based drama can skimp on the staging to focus on the message, but the production values here are as high as anything else you will see.
This is a co-production between Belgrade Theatre and China Plate in collaboration with Birmingham’s Geese Theatre Company. Geese works in the criminal justice system, and there are plans to take Please Do Not Touch into prisons, which I hope they will. This is a show to inform and inspire a theatre audience, but it has a positive message for prison inmates too.
Prison dramas can fall into clichés and stereotypes: the angry young man, the brutal prison guard, the prison bully, the dysfunctional family background, all of which Casey Bailey avoids, I suspect with the help of his Geese collaborators. Various characters offer Mason words of advice and encouragement, which would be helpful to anyone facing a prison term: Davis steers Mason towards literature, his parents let him know they love him and the initially reticent cellmate, Marsh, boosts his confidence.
Mason learns some important lessons in prison. His mum tells him that legal and illegal are not the same as right and wrong; what he did was illegal, and he needs to accept the consequences, but it wasn’t wrong. By the end of the play, Mason has learned that, although he can’t change what happened, he can change what happens next, which is a sentiment I suspect we can all benefit from.
Please Do Not Touch has a heart and a brain, it is thoughtfully written, sensitively performed and beautifully staged. Recommended.