Drawing on his long experience as a psychotherapist in the California state prison system, Leonard Manzella has written a bold and shocking drama about the challenges he faced in his dealings with deeply disturbed inmates, those who used to be called the criminally insane.
In Cages, viscerally directed by Jon Lawrence Rivera, we meet five of the inmates, all of whom are so angry and violent they must be locked up in cages during group therapy sessions (the chilling set is by Robert Selander). John Nielsen plays Thomas Morri, a tough-minded yet compassionate doctor who fights with all his might to somehow help these inmates; the state may have caged them like animals, but he tries desperately to treat them like human beings.
Standing in his way are a callous prison guard, Officer Caine (Matt Kirkwood) and an officious department head (Arlene Santana), who is more worried about her career than the plight of her patients.
Manzella holds back nothing in Cages: the inmates (Steve Apostolina, William Stanford Davis, Daniel V. Graulau, Jemal McNeill and Wiley B. Oscar) come across in rough, no-holds-barred fashion as they battle not just with their demons (almost all of them were brutally abused as children) but with life itself -- a life which offers them very little hope, joy or meaning.
Cages is a brilliantly acted and truthfully written drama -- a cry from the heart of the dark prison world of the mentally ill.
