Vidocq and Lacenaire are the original cop and robber. One is a former criminal turned chief of police and the other a glamorous and ineffectual murderer and petty thief. Based on Michel Foucault’s Discipline and Punish, this fresh new production explores methods of discipline and control in our society through the creation of a criminal class, a process that includes the invention of the cop and the robber.

Originally written in 1979 and first performed in 1984, Softcops is the last of Caryl Churchill’s quintet of historical plays that includes Vinegar Tom, Cloud Nine and Top Girls. It offers a provocative and sometimes disturbing view of the transition from the theatre of capital punishment to the birth of the modern prison system.

Softcops "is Foucault rendered as a music-hall turn and Victorian freak show... I can remember few evenings when theatre and history combined to give such intelligent fun." The Times Literary Supplement.