Award winning playwright and performance poet Kate Tempest, fresh from her debut play Wasted and following a sell-out success with Brand New Ancients, brought the latest offering, Hopelessly Devoted, to Lincoln’s LPac Theatre.

Produced by industry stalwarts Paines Plough, the play is directed by Stef O’Driscoll, who was selected for the Old Vic New Voices New York Exchange scheme and in 2010 became Associate Director at the Lyric Hammersmith.

Hopelessly Devoted follows the story of Chess. Facing a lengthy prison sentence, and with her cell mate Serena getting parole, the lovers and soulmates are forced to face the prospect of separation. The pair struggle to cope with life without each other and the isolation sees Chess immerse herself in music. With the help of music producer, Silver, who has faced her own demons in the past and conquered her fears, Chess finds her voice again. She’s then forced to confront her past in order to face her future.

The thought provoking and powerful performances in the play are as striking as the set design. Simple and effective, the stark black and white set with minimal props and lighting allows the power and emotion of the acting and the music, which includes Massive Attack’s Unfinished Sympathy, to flow uninterrupted into the audience and add meaning to their performance.

There’s clearly been a lot of time spent on selecting the right sounds to reflect both the harshness and the tender emotion of the story, which succeeds in adding the crucial extra layers of understanding which make the themes of love and hate, despair and hope, damnation and forgiveness, stand out for the audience.

Frances Ashman’s vocal stage presence and talent shines through as she delivers some poignant songs in the play which had the LPac audience enthralled.

The subtle messages of the piece are cleverly illustrated by Tempest through gut-wrenchingly honest and rough portrayals of prison life – the language harsh and guttural, the music loud, yet hauntingly moving in places.

On first appearance, there is nothing graceful, serene or calm about this play. Scratch the surface of its roughness and otherworldliness, however, and the superb acting from the leading ladies of Frances Achman (Chess), Sheila Atim (Serena) and Demi Oyediran (Silver) give this piece an honest and touchingly compassionate element – a plea to society that, as Silver comments during the play: “Flaws do not make you a lost cause”.