Our theatre culture is a funny thing in what it chooses to value and what it chooses to ignore. No one has been more marginalised by the mainstream than Edward Bond. But for the last 20 years he has been flourishing on the outside, creating a body of work, written mostly for young people, that stands alongside his classic plays, such as Lear and Saved. His quest is to understand not just what it means to be human but how our choices in life make us what we are.
A work of unflinching purity and brutality, as it plays out a series of choices and betrayals, it is premiered here by Big Brum theatre in an admirably simple and direct production. Set in the tomb-like cellar of a house sometime in the near future, Bond creates a world entirely recognisable in its vision of Daily Mail paranoia. With the government fuelling insecurities with faked pictures of illegal immigrants trying to breach the borders and soldiers on patrol in the streets, a woman is faced with impossible decisions when she discovers a stranger from another country taking refuge in her cellar. As the story of his own enforced choices unfolds, and a meeting with the people trafficker arranged, all the woman's easy certainties are called into question.
It is an intricate puzzle that is compelling in both its intellectual and emotional intensity. At a time when Bond's work is at long last beginning to be valued again, this is a reminder that while British theatre may have deserted him, his powers never have.
· At the Holte School, Birmingham B19, on November 22. Details: 0121-464 4604. Then touring.
