Sue MacGregor, BBC:

On a bleak and wintry night last week the skills, passion and commitment we witnessed from everyone connected with your venture were enormously moving, as we watched you and the actors transform a bare room into a rich tapestry of British history.  All of you are to be congratulated on a wonderful achievement.  The short rehearsal time you had at your disposal makes that achievement all the more miraculous.  I look forward to The Culture Show and to your next brave venture.

Thelma Holt,
Theatrical Producer:

I have to thank you once again for allowing me to enjoy the tremendous skills, and passion of another performance.  This is amazing; I always leave an LSW performance moved to tears, because I know where some of these men have usually come from.

Adam Munthe, Director,
Ledbury Poetry Festival:

Please forgive my precipitousness, but your remarkable project, with its exceptionally ambitious aims, its organic beauty, and quality of realisation, seems something that we need to support, further, and get other people to look at – especially the young.

Professor Rod Morgan,
HM Chief Inspector of Probation:

Please accept my congratulations on an extraordinary achievement and vitally important project.  I was enormously impressed.

Gemma Jones, 
Celebrated Actress:

This was a splendid production – by ANY standard.

Miranda Seymour,
Celebrated Biographer:

I would have gone a long way to see such a fine production and I really can’t imagine it being more convincingly and powerfully acted.

Lord David Ramsbotham:

No one who has seen an LSW play – professional actors alongside offenders / ex-offenders and community members who have often done nothing like this before in their lives – can have failed to be moved by hearing, from the men and women themselves, what the experience means to them.  Quite apart from being bowled over by what I see and hear, I find myself thinking endlessly about the implications.  These men and women are, simply – much as the Shakespeare is himself – life-altering exemplars for each and every one of us.

Dame Janet Suzman,
Famed Actress/Director

There’s no doubt the baggage these actors bring onto the stage with them fills out the imagination much more than inexperienced actors can muster.  No wonder the audience was on fire.

Philip Voss,
RSC Associate Artist:

These actors instruct us all in the art of acting.  Above all: you understand every word. They give the language its full weight of heart and mind.  I will never forget this experience.