Aphrodite, known as Affy, and Diana are two teenage half-sisters with beautiful, heavenly names and an ugly, hellish existence. They live with their hopeless prostitute mother, Chloe, and her abusive pimp-cum-boyfriend, whom the girls call Godzilla. Despite Chloe's obvious preference for her younger, white daughter Affy over the black Di, the girls love and look out for each other.
In a year Affy will turn 16. Then they plan to be off to make a life for themselves away from the threats of Godzilla. But when Godzilla lays into Affy, beating her up and breaking her arm, she decides that she has had enough.
Luckily for her, she has a secret escape route - a home with the middle-class father she has never known. Leaving means abandoning her sister without a safety net and with the added burden of looking after the increasingly pathetic and dependant Chloe, who is much more of a child than either of her daughters. Affy decides to save her own skin, with tragic consequences.
Tanika Gupta's drama for Clean Break -the women's theatre company that developed from and works with women within the criminal justice system - is nearly a really good play and is always a very enjoyable one. It is a stark reminder of how much family circumstances and skin colour play a part in the lives of many women who end up in prison.
It is also a good story, well told. The scenes between the sisters ring true and sparkle. However, the drama meanders from its real focus in the second half, with the introduction of a stray character, which feels like padding.
Nevertheless, for such a grim story there is a surprising feel-good factor in both the play and Natasha Betteridge's exquisitely judged production, played in the round on Atlanta Duffy's set, which evokes both stolen childhoods and an alluring seaside freedom.
It is also terrifically well acted by Sarah Cattle as the surprisingly steely Affy, Natasha Gordon, whose Di draws the shortest of straws, and Connie Walker, whose body language as the disintegrating Chloe suggests that if she moved too suddenly she might smash into a thousand pieces.
Until November 30. Box office: 020-7503 1646.
