It is not always the story you have to tell that makes the most impact, but the way you tell it, and never more so than in Debbie Tucker Green's brief but lethal tale of family dysfunction.
Green has already proved herself a distinctive talent with the recent premiere of her first play, Dirty Butterfly. While Born Bad is stylistically very different, it displays Green's ability to bend language. Here, when each member of the family speaks, it is as if they are wielding a weapon to attack or protect themselves.
Dawta is the eldest child in a black family, and is so upset that she has bawled out her mother. Now the rest of the family is upset, too.
Dawta approaches each of the family in turn to try to get them to talk. At first it is not quite clear what is gnawing away at Dawta, what she is trying to get her mother, sisters and brother to confront.
Her first sister tries to piece together bits of the story. But is her memory selective? Unreliable? Or straight as a die? Sister number two provides an entirely different perspective, her hostility to Dawta crackling across the room like electricity. Is she telling the truth when she says her childhood was all peaches and cream? If so, how and why? Who is she protecting?
It is only gradually that the pieces start to fit together like some terrible jigsaw, culminating in an exquisitely torturous scene towards the end of a family game of musical chairs in which the unspeakable truth is finally revealed.
Played on a stage with just a couple of white screens and some chairs, Kathy Burke's production is simplicity itself, so simple that it spares the audience nothing. The acting is spot-on. The overall effect is of having swallowed a scalding cup of triple espresso in one gulp. The burn stays with you after you have left the theatre.
· Until May 17. Box office: 020-7722 9301.
