ER at the Fringe: Fair Trade

Fair Trade illustrates the food chain of sex trafficking, from the first approaches by recruiters in poor countries to the realities awaiting smuggled immigrants in England. Executive-produced by Emma Thompson, the project has gathered quite some buzz since its Islington premiere in February 2009.

The show’s production values are impressive: a clever mobile set conjures up locations as diverse as a desolate African village and an airport customs check. The score, played live, mixes keyboards and strings with more exotic instruments like the djembe drum in very evocative, moving themes. Acting-wise, Deborah Hewitt and Sarah Amankwah are especially captivating, the latter excelling with a fine-tuned portrayal of a destitute African girl squirming with cold fear at every step that brings her closer to abduction.

Fair Trade only falters in the writing. Its documental accuracy (it’s all true, gleaned from interviews with actual victims) renders the plot random and episodic, and the characters never develop fully, remaining simple excuses to set the wheels of the sex trafficking industry in motion. Cheap sentimental lines like “that could be me, seating next to you on the Tube” don’t do much to raise their credibility beyond that of TV ads, either. Had its many atrocities been heaped on vivid, complex characters, the tragedy of dehumanization it strives so intently to impress upon the general public would have been presented much more poignantly and relatably – performing a better service both for its art and its cause.

Still, some of the play’s most informative moments resound with a pathos of their own, including a modern-day slave auction and a former-prostitute-turned-recruiter who got her freedom in exchange for finding five girls to replace her. Even if Fair Trade compromises dramatic depth for pamphletary immediacy, it succeeds in raising awareness to a deeply lodged network of systematic exploitation at once ubiquitous and invisible.

Fair Trade. Directed by Lotte Wakeham. Pleasance Dome, Edinburgh. 4-15, 17-22, 24-30 August, 15:30. £8.50 (£7 concessions). www.shatterbox.co.uk

Find out more about sex trafficking on the Anti-Trafficking Alliance’s website: www.atalliance.org.uk