Theatre of the abused

The play Nirbhaya , written and directed by South African Yael Farber, has been described as "unbearable".

"There is so much emotion surrounding Yael Farber's new play, Nirbhaya, it may be beyond criticism," Lyn Gardner writes in Britain's The Guardian.

Based on the gang rape and murder of 23-year-old physiotherapy student Jyoti Singh Pandey, in India, this was never intended to be easy theatre.

As The Guardian reviewer Andrew Dickson writes: "What makes Nirbhaya exceptional, and at times almost unbearable to watch, is that only two of the seven cast members (Japjit Kaur, who plays Pandey, and Ankur Vikal, who plays one of the attackers), are acting in any straightforward sense."

The other five are enacting scenes from their own lives.

Farber has used the gang rape that horrified the world in December to contextualise the personal stories of the Indian-born performers who have been victims of sexual abuse - some as adults, some as children.

The rape of Pandey was not an isolated attack. The Indian capital, New Delhi, is referred to as the "rape capital of the world" and, according to The Guardian, India is the worst G20 country in which to be a woman.

Laura Barnett, of The Daily Telegraph, writes: "It's hard to overstate the emotional impact of seeing Pandey's attack played out on stage, and of hearing these women describe what they themselves have gone through: one performer, her face disfigured by scars, describes being set alight by her husband, and her despair at subsequently having her son taken from her."

Mark Fisher, for The Scotsman, writes: "It is the act of reclaiming their stories for themselves that transforms Nirbhaya from a statement of the obvious (sexual violence is bad) to something with political weight."

But the play has not been spared criticism.

Timeout's Andrzej Lukowski writes that "some glossy, wordless sequences feel ill-judged" and Gardner criticises it for "veering dangerously close to well-meaning theatrical misery memory".

But, acknowledges Lukowski, though Nirbhaya is not as accomplished as Farber's 2012 hit, Mies Julie, "that was hardly the point, and she deserves enormous credit for getting these women comfortable enough to talk about the terrible things that have happened to them".

Nirbhaya is on at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe until August 26.