When you and I go to work, we know - and expect - that as a matter of course our place of work will be safe. It is not the case for Ali and the other women who work on the streets of Liverpool selling sex. Liverpool has one of the highest rates of prostitution in the country. As Ali observes: "Liverpool is the capital of culture? Liverpool is the capital of fucking prostitution!"
Unprotected, a verbatim play based on hundreds of interviews with sex workers, residents, politicians, police and clients of the sex industry, is not as sophisticated as some examples of this genre, but it is a very fine example of how theatre can top journalism as a means of raising debate.
At the heart of Unprotected is Liverpool City Council's proposal for a managed zone for street workers, and the government's announcement in January that such zones would not be acceptable. Restrained and heartfelt, Unprotected reveals the human face of every argument, without ever wallowing in victim culture. It also shows you the human cost of what happens when government policy and policing fail, leaving the girls - most of them heroin addicts - vulnerable. Girls like Hanane Parry and Pauline Stephen who, in 2003, were found hacked to pieces. Or Anne Marie Foy who was murdered in September 2005. Before she died, Anne Marie was interviewed by the team of writers working on Unprotected, and in one of the play's most poignant moments her voice is heard on tape. "You're never safe. You know out there, it's like every car you get into, you don't know whether you gonna get out of it."
It is Hanane and Pauline's stories - told through interviews with their mothers - that form Unprotected's backbone. Stories that need to be heard - if we, and the government, would only listen.
· Until April 1. Box office: 0151 709 4776
