South Africa, 2006: Jennifer's elderly husband, a former policeman who worked under the apartheid regime, is dying of a brain tumour in the bedroom of their Johannesburg home. Beyond the security gates, the bulldozers are ripping up the rose garden as the local people look for the bones of their ancestors. But the bound and tortured bodies being unearthed belong to the far more recently dead, and soon Jennifer will have to face up to the horrors she has tried for so long to deny.
Written by Kay Adshead, who is best known for the powerful asylum drama The Bogus Woman, this latest piece pulls no punches. And it is clear from the opening scenes exactly where the story is going. In fact, it is because the audience already know at least part of the hidden secret that the tension is all the greater. It is cunningly heightened by Joe Legwabe's live vocal and drumming accompaniment, which creates a hallucinatory quality for Jennifer's maid, Beauty, who claims to have magic powers and offers Jennifer the opportunity of salvation.
The result is a popular piece of theatre on a serious theme, which glues you to your seat. Even if the story is in some ways familiar - and the plotting has its awkward moments - the show works its own potent magic as it reminds us that crimes often have many victims, and that those who stand by and watch are just as guilty and in need of redemption as the perpetrators.
The staging can be a little clumsy, but there is a good performance from Pauline Moran as Jennifer, a woman who has constructed a prison for herself through misplaced love, and an outstanding one from Sarah Niles as Beauty, a young woman who knows that to face the future you must uncover the past.
· Until November 4. Box office: 020-7610 4224.
