Anne-Marie Duff and Grace Doherty in Some Woman [Ellie Kurtz]

HELEN Edmundson’s searing drama about misogyny has several unlikely plot points, but the inciting event is all too plausible. The emotional fallout for a woman who dares to stand up to Tyler – an unseen 11-year-old boy she has never met before, who calls her an effing bitch on a station platform – is gripping.

Anne-Marie Duff plays Julie, a middle-aged woman who is shocked by the boy’s behaviour and decides to report him to the headmaster (Daniel Millar) of his school. Unfortunately, her actions have repercussions when Tyler raises the stakes by making counter-accusations.

Julie is divorced. Over the course of Some Woman, we learn that Richard’s (Geoffrey Streatfeild) affair ended their marriage some years earlier. Julie retains a nagging sense that she is somehow to blame for her family’s flaws.

Her youngest daughter Ginnie (a sympathetic Grace Doherty) suffers from depression, while her older daughter Kate (a fiery Hannah Onslow) can’t wait to put some distance between them, moving abroad for work with her boyfriend Nathan (an emphatic Tobi King-Bakare).

When Julie’s lawyer (Ioanna Kimbook) encourages her to plead guilty to the lesser of two charges, Julie begins to doubt herself.

Then Tyler’s father (Stephen Wight) visits her in a far-fetched but menacing scene that lays bare how easily misogyny is passed down the generations.

Blanche McIntyre’s handsome production is played out on Robert Jones’s cold, grey-tiled set, which serves as family kitchen, courtroom, train platform and metaphorical prison.

Despite a story that stretches our credulity at times, Duff’s performance is deeply affecting, capturing the disbelief and steely determination of an ordinary woman whose life is unravelling.

A compelling and topical drama.

Until November 21
nationaltheatre.org.uk/