Ordinary Decent Criminal, which comes to the Courtyard Theatre at Leeds Playhouse from 12-13 November, is a criminally good new play by multi award-winning playwright and ex-offender Ed Edwards. It stars renowned political comedian, activist and actor Mark Thomas.

How would you describe Ordinary Decent Criminal?

Ed: For me, it’s a play about a political reawakening; about a character who swallowed their political commitment after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union where it seems to the character that all hope of political progress in the world has died. It’s also about seeing that the fight has to go on, with or without hope.

Can you discuss the development process? What inspired you to write this story?

Ed: A play has to have some sort of spark based on reality. I did three and a half years in jail myself many years ago, so the spark for this was writing about those experiences and trying to make some sense out of them, which I hadn’t done for thirty years.

The play is set in the 1990s following the Strangeways Prison Riot. Why did that feel like the right period to set your play?

Ed: I hadn’t spoken about my experiences before – partly because when you’re in jail, nothing happens, so you feel that there’s not much to talk about. Then, recently, I started to think that it was time to write about these stories. My process is that I have to start writing before I realise what it’s about, and the themes emerge from what I’m writing. It was only as I was writing it that I realised it was relevant for today. The play begins at the fall of the Berlin Wall, and at the very end we flash forward to today, where that period of Western dominance, the unipolar world, is coming crashing down. It’s about how to respond to that great fall that faces us all.

How did you come to collaborate with Mark, and why did you cast him in the lead role?

Ed: Mark saw my play The Political History of Smack and Crack and really enjoyed it. We met a couple of times after that and got on really well. Eventually, I wrote to him and asked if I could write something for him. He said yes, and then we didn’t do that idea. We did something else – England & Son – that emerged from our conversations. This is the follow-up to that.

Is it useful to be able to use humour to balance the dark reality of Frankie’s life in prison?

Ed: When you’re writing a play for Mark Thomas, you’re looking for the laughs, and Mark will always make them work. Political History was also a mix of tragedy and comedy – I think it’s just my normal writing style.

Mark, what was it like to collaborate with Ed on this production?

Mark: I love Ed. I properly love him. He is my brother and my comrade. Working with him is always beautiful and intense. We have a great relationship. When I was about to go on stage for a performance of England & Son, Ed appeared to give me a new line to put in the show. I told him to go away in brusque monosyllabic language and then literally walked on stage to start the show. Afterwards, he found me and said sorry. But I had managed to insert the new line and he had really come backstage to say I told you so. That is just another reason I love him. Being with him on the creative process is a sharing and intense time. Life’s too short for it to be anything else.

How does performing theatre compare with stand-up comedy?

Mark: I improvise less in theatre. Ed has gone to the bother of writing the script so I should do my best to stick to it. I like the emotional depth and power of theatre and I love the brevity of stand up. I think Ed manages to grab those two things really well. The big difference is theatre audiences rarely turn up drunk!

When I started doing stand up, people would go to a club not knowing what to expect, all they knew was they were going to see something you could not see on the telly. Now the audiences tend to go to stand up knowing what they want and what they want to see; they want to see stuff they have seen on the telly, Netflix or TikTok. Theatre audiences tend to have that little bit more adventure about them. In what would be called ‘fringe theatre’, audiences want to see something they haven’t seen before.

What do you hope audiences take away from Ordinary Decent Criminal?

Ed: Tolstoy has this idea that when you experience a work of art, you get a sense of togetherness with the other people who have experienced it too. It’s about the communion of the writer with the audience and then the audience with each other. That’s what I hope our audiences get.

Mark: Merchandise.