Prudence Play - Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2025

Caroline Dunn steps into the role of Sister Prudence with both humour and heartbreaking depth. On the surface, Prudence is a young nun, bound in habit - though the glittering, sequined dress beneath hints at a hidden, dazzling self, yearning to break free. The habit becomes more than costume; it is a cloak of Catholicism, a metaphor for all that has been repressed and concealed.

Prudence’s story is one of thwarted potential. Targeted at a young age and pushed toward religious devotion, she sacrifices her dreams of becoming a designer, an actor or an artist. Her queerness, supressed but never quite denied, is woven into the subtext of her faith as perhaps even the reason she fled into it. It is no accident that she is a nun who accepts evolution, or one who quietly admits that church ritual feels dull. She is a believer of sorts, but a restless, questioning one.

Dunn infuses Prudence with remarkable warmth and humanity. You find yourself silently urging her to escape, to claim her identity, to step into the world as her true, gay self. What begins in broad comedy with sharp wit gradually deepens into something more profound. The play grows darker, more contemplative, as Prudence confronts the voices in her head. These voices are not from God but internal, echoing years of shame, repression, and self-doubt. Battling between faith and authenticity, between imposed identity and self-liberation.

The comedy unfolds into a poignant portrait of a woman torn between the church’s quiet confines and the brilliant, queer self that longs to shine through. Dunn’s performance makes Prudence not just a character but a mirror to many queer people reflecting the painful cost of hiding, and the courage it takes to resist the voices that tell you to stay cloaked.

Lee Hutchison

4/5
​
This performance was watched on the final day of the run