A woman's voice cries out from the darkness. "All my life," she says, "I have waited for the day when the future would arrive." She speaks, with four other actors, about the past, present and future of South Africa, but through the prism of personal experience. In Yael Farber's powerful examination of the "emotional shrapnel" of apartheid, the small cast draw on their childhoods in a time of oppression. There are many real tears on stage and in the audience as they do so.
Some of the stories feature universal tribulations, but mostly they articulate the trauma of being young and black in South Africa in the 1980s. The impact of forced removals and land seizures is made clear, as is the reality of growing up in the toughest part of a Soweto township.
Jabulile Tshabalala, who fled her township when threatened with death, and then lost her cousin and uncle to crime, says she grew up hating South Africa - "this country where we go to more funerals than weddings".
What elevates these autobiographical fragments into compelling theatre is the inventive use of song, dance, many languages and mime to connect the stories and bring each one fleetingly to life - and a sparse set used to maximum effect. Large bowls strewn about the stage are transformed from a child's bath to a train seat on a long, bumpy journey, and then a dining table, altar, wild horse and mortuary slab.
Transformation is key here: this drama may be shaped by telling the truth and by reconciliation with the past, but it ends with the cleansing possibilities of fire and water, in a poetic tribute to the freedoms of the future.
· Until Saturday. Box office: 0845 120 7518. Then touring.
