P R I S O N E R S

Prisoners is based on the now infamous Milgram Experiments of the '60's, during which volunteers were asked to administer what they thought were electrical shocks of increasing force to other people in the name of education. Like the experiments, the play explores the role of authority and responsibility in our social experience. The audience takes the role of dispassionate observer, piecing together a mystery, with slabs of information introduced periodically to completely change one's understanding of the entire premise.

Like this review, it is a long and wordy journey (at times I felt like I was in a Philosophy lecture: The Why of Humanity) but they're not called Grey Matter Media Productions for nothing and I enjoyed the mental workout. Rekha Sharma and Troy Yorke are both engagingly intense performers with a clean grasp of the material, although in such an intimate setting they could afford to be more vocally restrained. The script is often didactic but Prisoners is awash with big questions, about ethics, accountability, and existence; questions that are worth the time it takes to come to your own opinion.