Liberation Squares review

School, library and bus stop are the three pillars of Ruqaya and Sabi’s shared world. The latter is a battlefield where they turn umbrellas into shields to swerve objects hurled from bullies on the bus. But it’s the transformation of the library into the pretentiously named community centre Bibliotek (“with a ‘k’!”), where an organic cola costs £4, that deals a harsher blow – and cleverly anchors this story in the defunding of community resources happening across the UK. 

Xara is an ambassador for Bibliotek’s well-intentioned, poorly executed youth group, Safe Sisters. When her phone is confiscated by programme leaders, the girls team up to post a video on social media in complaint. But the video somehow winds up with enforcers of the government’s anti-terrorism Prevent programme, who come calling on the teens with intrusive, wholly unrelated questions about their lifestyles as British Muslims. 

Bhatia’s staging is playfully Brechtian, with white boards behind the stage telling us where the story starts and where it’s headed, and used to illustrate key developments with drawings of stick figures. Her switching of naturalism for comic book-style melodrama as confrontations are re-enacted reminds us that although they feel mature, these girls are still children. Designer Tomás Palmer’s set, featuring a corporate, square-patterned carpet covering not only the floor, but the walls and a table, is a nod to the play’s title and suggestive of the strict, boxed-in surveillance measures that the girls find themselves grappling with. A little too much time is spent on agonising over friendships, but when the trio become amateur sleuths investigating who flagged the video to the authorities, the pace picks up. 

Bhattacharyya’s portrayal of a clampdown on protesting, and a government investing its energies in a Minority Report-style bid to pre-empt crime, hits on something worryingly prescient at a time when our rights are under threat. It’s a pressing topic, compellingly explored.

Nottingham Playhouse, then touring to June 8. fifthword.co.uk