Roadkill was brutal and compelling when it premiered in Edinburgh last year and Cora Bissett and Stef Smith's uncompromising look at sex trafficking is just as brutal and compelling now that it has found a new home in Canning Town. Be warned: this is as uncomfortable a night in the theatre as you're ever likely to get.
For a few fragile minutes on the minibus ride from Stratford East, there's optimism in the air. Nigerian teenager Mary (Mercy Ojelade) can't wait
to start her new life in London under the protection of her "auntie" Martha (Adura Onashile) but her long-anticipated English bedroom soon becomes a chamber of utter horrors. This nondescript terrace house is a brothel, where three terrified young women are locked up and policed by Martha, herself a trafficked woman who is desperately trying to escape, and their brutal pimp (John Kazek).
What follows is unrelenting anguish leavened only by Mary's remarkable resilience of spirit. The graceful Ojelade gives a performance of such shattering intensity that I have no idea how she even manages to stand up for the curtain call, let alone repeat the show twice in an evening. Onashile makes fine and complex work of Martha's dilemma.
Recorded voices between scenes give us punters' "reviews" of Mary, as if she were a restaurant.
My only quibble? That this piece will be preaching so utterly to the converted.
Until November 20 (020 7638 8891, barbican.org.uk)
Roadkill
Theatre Royal Stratford East
Gerry Raffles Square, Stratford, E15 1BN
