Theatre review: Sylvia Plath - Three women, the first revival

THIS is a meaningful and emotionally searing verse play based on dramatic monologues, as the title suggests, of three women. One, the Wife, is expecting, gives birth and then worries affectionately about the fate of her new son. The second, the Secretary, has suffered a miscarriage, perhaps one of many. And the third, the Student, gives her child up for adoption. The three stories intertwine and the monologues briefly become an ensemble as the women meet on the hospital maternity ward.

The play is an almost lost – and certainly underappreciated – piece of work by Plath written in the year before her suicide. Resurrected and restaged by Robert Shaw, founder and artistic director of the serious-minded company Inside Intelligence, Plath's weighty, evocative words are given new life by compelling performances – that avoid too much melodrama and sentimentality – and spare staging. Almost unseen since it was written, this example of Plath's confessional style has fresh relevance since troubled playwright Sarah Kane's work has become very nearly mainstream. Like Plath, Kane is another confessional poet of women's experience, albeit her jaggy theatre for the Prozac generation tends to have more surprises. Plath's first known complete attempt at drama – initially intended as a radio play – is set in the era before effective birth control and legal abortion. The Valium generation, if you will. It's as if Three Women was the mother of Kane's 4:48 Psychosis. Gentler, but just as honest.

Until 31 August. Today 11am.