Entertainment

Freedom tests a bond formed behind bars

Edie Falco and Alison Pill are among the most likable of ac tresses, able to communicate emotion with unfussy directness. And so it’s a genuine pleasure to see them share a stage — especially one as intimate as Playwrights Horizons’ smaller venue — under rising director Anne Kauffman.

But it’s hard to shake the nagging feeling that perhaps they weren’t the best choices for Chloë Moss’ appealing “This Wide Night.”

The play is based on research the young British writer conducted at Cookham Wood prison, in Kent. As a result, “This Wide Night” has a gritty, naturalistic vibe that feels earned, and is given a mem-

orable visual equivalent in Rachel Hauck’s set — a filthy, messy studio apartment.

That squalid abode is occupied by 30-year-old Marie (Pill), who hides her fears under a thin veneer of aggressive, strutting cool. She claims she works at a neighborhood pub, although you wonder why the dress code requires tight tops and microskirts.

Meanwhile, Lorraine (Falco) just got out of jail and looks up her former cellmate — who happens to be Marie. The two fumble their way around each other as they resume a friendship formed in forced circumstances, even as they try adjusting to the constraints and anxieties of their newfound freedom.

Lorraine is an interesting contradiction: a dull, timid woman of 50 who happens to be a showy, meaty character part. She’s on medication for an unspecified illness, probably mental, and Falco has endowed her with a richly detailed body language — fidgeting with her glasses, standing in a defensive fencer’s stance, peeking around like a startled bird.

Falco also gets to do an English working-class accent. Or at least she attempts one: The two actresses struggle to hold their imported inflections.

It’s great to see an American team attempt the kind of unvarnished kitchen-sink realism

that’s a trademark of UK storytelling, both onstage and onscreen. And it’s a gratifying change from the middle-class navel-gazing we so often have to wade through. But sadly, it’s hard to forget you’re watching a pair of gifted, immensely sympathetic actresses playing pretend.

elisabeth.vincentelli@nypost.com