So Help Me Dog. Hens and Chickens Theatre.

Writer Dean Stalham used to be a career criminal. In 2002 he was sentenced to three and a half years in Wandsworth prison for handling a £6 million stash of stolen art including original Warhols, Chagalls, and Dali lithographs. A chance encounter with a Royal Court prison outreach programme saw him try his hand at writing. Since then, he has penned half a dozen plays and has had great success developing art and drama with representatives from all sides of the criminal justice system. Stalham’s new work So Help Me Dog tells the story of a career criminal whose life is turned around by theatre. One can assume the piece, part verse drama, part polemic, and part extended mea culpa, is at least partially autobiographical.

Stalham’s argument in So Help Me Dog is that generations of poor life chances breed generations of criminal offending. His protagonist Danny Franks (an immensely likeable Kai Spellman) certainly has a desperately tough upbringing on a Cricklewood council estate. Danny’s dad begins adult life as a driver for a soon-to-be murdered, gay, one-eyed gangster. His mum is sexually abused by an uncle from her early teens. Aged 17 the couple conjure up Danny in a potting shed in a local park. “I was cultivated rather than conceived” Danny tells us.

Dad, now a butcher, loves his son but his idea of sage parental advice is to dole out tips for winning punch-ups. “Man the fuck up” and “never fight a Chinaman” are good examples. Warning him against bringing girlfriends home he tells his child, “if you want to fuck your dogs do it in the park”. Mum, who uses drugs but loves art as much as she genuinely loves her son, spends so much time at work that the infant Danny grows up thinking his Nan is his real parent.

Despite ADHD and undiagnosed dyslexia (possibly the result of consuming a sugar-cube laced with LSD at the age of 3) Danny thrives at school. At his adored cub scouts he earns every badge available. But then at 15 the lad, whose shining chestnut hair makes him “look like a young Jim Morrison from The Doors”, is dragged reluctantly to work for heroin-dealing Uncle Eddie. Eddie dies with a needle in his arm, and it is a teenage Danny who finds him. By the time he is 20 our protagonist has a criminal record a metre long. Salvation finally comes through the efforts of “that nancy lot at the Royal Court”. “I can write better than that shit” he says of the first play he sees.

Stalham recounts much of Danny’s story through a courtroom style encounter with a demonic Greek chorus in the form of a sinister Prosecutor (Claire Maria Fox on great form) and a snarling Prison Officer (Gary Cain). In some senses Danny is a tragic figure straight out of Aeschylus, so the structure works brilliantly. That said, it seems fair to assume the writer is no fan of the criminal justice system. One wonders whether real-life lawyers and screws are quite so one-dimensionally malign as portrayed here. Danny’s explanation for stealing an entire painting collection – a kind of Robin Hood-style liberation of art for the masses – verges on self-exculpatory and self-serving.

Stalham’s writing is packed with humour and Lil Warren’s direction brings light and shade, including a tremendous dance sequence set to a rendition of My Old Man’s a Dustman. There are brutally dark moments here, particularly a truly heart-breaking excursion into events surrounding the death of Danny’s wife. But ultimately the protagonist, though deeply flawed, emerges courageous and redeemed. One sense things could have been very different. Thank you, Royal Court.

Writer:  Dean Stalham

Director:   Lil Warren