When It Happens To You
Park Theatre, London

AMERICAN author Tawni O’Dell’s deeply personal memoir about the rape of her grown-up daughter Esme and the shattering after-effects on both her and her children must have been an important cathartic exercise when first performed in New York, with O’Dell playing herself, but risks being too intimate and personalised to fully work on stage.

With Amanda Abbington at the heart of the European Premiere taking Tawni’s role as Tara, Esme’s divorced mother, the play’s simple narrative style becomes more than just a dramatic reading as the enduring impact of the sexual assault ripples out through every element of the family’s existence.

On a stripped-down stage Abbington gives a nuanced and commanding performance. The public and private reality of a world turned upside down are charted with contrasting elements of grief, pain and humour and profound observations of guilt and loss are underscored by references to previous joyful family experiences.

With the life-changing event largely narrated from Tara’s distraught perspective, the other characters might remain under-developed elements of the protagonist’s disintegrating world but Rosie Day as Esme and Miles Molan as Tara’s son Connor give strong performances with emotional family outbursts balanced by insights into their diverging, individual lives.

Tok Stephen as the other member of the cast effectively multi-roles some of the characters that enter Tara’s life outside her direct family, injecting necessary elements of perspective on the family’s private suffering.

Jez Bond’s direction allows O’Dell’s account to be heard without any theatrical clutter or unnecessary stylisation, giving the writer’s knowingly subjective outlook both clarity and candour. Abbington manages not only to show the devastating consequences without self-pity, but also to give the character’s journey a universal quality in a world where it is claimed 30 per cent of women have been assaulted during their lives (World Health Organisation).

Sexual assault is the theme of many dramas, but what gives this play its unique quality is the maternal lens used to observe the event and the extent of the damage. O’Dell might have thought the play was to help her daughter find her way back from the darkness but the dramatisation justifiably reaches out to a much wider audience.

Runs until August 31. Box office: 020 7870 6876, parktheatre.co.uk