Theatre review: Room

It has echoes of real-life stories, of course; young women taken from the street, held in basements or garden sheds, and systematically raped and abused over a period of years, stretching towards decades. Yet the most striking thing about Emma Donoghue’s stage version of her award-winning novel, Room, is its intense imaginative quality, as she and director Cora Bissett – with an outstanding creative team – draws us into the inner world of five-year-old Jack, who lives imprisoned in a cell-like garden shed with his mother, and of his older alter ego, Big Jack, who watches and waits, and carries some of the narrative.