'A system is people. These walls and bars didn't build themselves.'

Inside the walls of HMP Drummond, long-term prisoners Baxter, Norton and Lenny pass the time with poker, banter and the kind of gallows humour only lifers can muster.

When Lenny's body starts to give out, young prison officer Mark keeps an eye on him. What begins as a duty of care becomes an unexpected friendship, exposing the cracks in a system built to punish, not to support.

Darkly funny and unflinchingly honest, Evan Placey's play Lifers challenges what we think we know about crime, punishment and redemption. Do some crimes make a second chance impossible? And when the world moves on without you, what does justice really mean? Produced by Synergy Theatre Project, it premiered at Southwark Playhouse, London, in 2025, directed by Synergy's Artistic Director Esther Baker.



Evan Placey is an award-winning Canadian-British playwright and screenwriter. His other plays include Consensual, Banana Boys, Pronoun, Holloway Jones and Girls Like That.



'An inside look at the ageing prison population... well-observed... dialogue peppered with colourful comedy... Uncommonly, it is not didactic and neither patronises the audience nor tells us how to judge the characters... authentically captures its setting and asks knotty questions about the state of the nation as well as its institutions'



'Poignant, honest and affecting... a thought-provoking drama that picks apart some satisfyingly knotty ethical dilemmas... smart and pulls no punches'



'A coruscating indictment of the prison system... beautifully written'



'A powerful, thought-provoking piece of theatre... compellingly candid... challenges our conceptions, and preconceptions, about crime, punishment, redemption and what "justice" really means... utterly convincing in both its depiction of prison life and its effect upon the individuals involved'



'Meticulously crafted, powerful yet accessible... rich in dark humour... absorbingly complex... utterly compelling in its detail'