A writer sits in a drab meeting room, surrounded by female prisoners. Her cheerfulness feels awkward, and barely masks her bewilderment. Not wanting to impose, she doesn't ask the women to tell the reasons for their imprisonment. She encourages them to write stories, bland fantasies of life outside. The writer is hopelessly out of her depth.
If the six playwrights behind Charged felt similarly discombobulated researching their commissions for Clean Break, a theatre company that specialises in working with women in prison, there are no signs of it on stage. Divided into two programmes, Charged is a blisteringly powerful meditation on female experience not only behind bars but on the streets, in rehab, as mothers and as part of the police force. The plays focus on child trafficking, domestic violence and death in custody, and it isn't easy viewing: it's overwhelming and depressing. It forces you to question how many women are in prison because they have untreated mental health problems, or because they momentarily stood up for themselves.
But for all that Charged makes you squirm, the plays have a gripping vitality. The characters are vivid, especially Liz, the husband-murderer who forces the naive writer to face the truth in Rebecca Lenkiewicz's That Almost Unnameable Lust, and the rehabilitated mother in Winsome Pinnock's Taken, both beautifully played by Beatie Edney. There is theatrical flair in the writing of Chloe Moss's desperately sad Fatal Light and Tessa Walker's sharp direction of Dancing Bears. It's striking how the overall tone is not stridently feminist, but quiet and matter-of-fact. Charged feels more urgent for it.
Until 27 November. Box office: 020-7478 0100.
