You might expect that the premiere of a new play by Eve Ensler, creator of the Vagina Monologues and founder of the mass action movement One Billion Rising, would be a major event. In fact, it’s a comparatively tiny one; presented in a rehearsal studio at the West Yorkshire Playhouse as part of its A Play a Pie and a Pint series of early evening shorts. That said, Ensler’s latest monologue must be difficult to place, as it is barely half an hour long and represents the horror of human trafficking in the most harrowing terms. Performed in near-total darkness, an unnamed young woman describes a cycle of poverty, corruption and sexual abuse that has led her to her present situation, secreted in a shipping container full of rotting avocados.
At times the monologue, sensitively directed by Mark Rosenblatt, acquires the hushed intimacy of a confession: “Can I tell you something? I’m not a very good prostitute. But they don’t care if you’re good. They only care if you’re 16.” The sensory deprivation of travelling among a shipment of avocados carries a Beckettian strain of absurdity; but though Ensler withholds details of where the woman is travelling to or from, the situation feels disturbingly universal. It’s hard not to be reminded in the present instant of Mary Jane Veloso, sentenced to death in Indonesia having left Dubai after an attempted rape. The writing is taut, purposeful and free of the slightly cloying therapy-speak that has been known to creep into Ensler’s work. It receives a searingly intense performance from Rebecca Grant, whose willingness to imagine the unimaginable is commendable. Mic Pool’s disorientating sound design is practically an audio installation in itself: the terrifying, metallic crashes inflicted on the walls of the container reverberate like the appalling ramifications of Ensler’s prose.
• West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds, until 30 May. Box office: 0113 213 7700.
