Based on real events, Tawni O’Dell’s hard-hitting theatrical memoir When It Happens to You makes its UK debut at Park Theatre, directed by Jez Bond and starring Amanda Abbington as Tara, a mother whose life is shattered by a 3am phone call from her daughter Esme (Rosie Day). O’Dell doesn’t skirt around the cold hard facts: Esme was followed home to her New York apartment and raped by a stranger, while her neighbours listened to her scream and did nothing to help.

All this we find out within the first few minutes, after which the rest of the 90-minute play dwells not on what happened that night but on its consequence, the slow unravelling of a previously close-knit family. As Esme’s life goes off the rails, Tara is forced to confront not only her devastation at being unable to protect her child, but also a dark secret from her own past. Meanwhile Esme’s brother Connor (Miles Molan) struggles to face up to the destruction that can be wreaked by other men just like him.

On an empty stage, against a generic city skyline, the three family members – joined by Tok Stephen in a number of roles – frequently stand at opposite corners, their physical distance from each other emphasising the gaping emotional chasm that separates them. We see glimpses of their former life, the typical brother-sister bickering between Tara’s two precocious children, and the bright potential both have in their respective areas of study. And in contrast, we see Connor angry and hurt in the aftermath of that 3am phone call, and Esme physically and mentally broken by her ordeal. Rosie Day is exceptional, her body language – hunched shoulders, arms hugging her midriff, lowered head – speaking perhaps even more clearly than she herself does about what she’s feeling.

Amanda Abbington is outstanding as Tara, a woman just about holding herself together and hiding her pain and rage behind dark humour and questionable life choices. She commands the stage with absolute authority from the start, which turns out to be both a blessing and a curse for the production. This is, after all, Tara’s story, and the strength of Abbington’s performance keeps us captivated – but such is her presence, and the dominance of Tara’s voice over anyone else’s, that we find we learn little about the other characters. Despite engaging performances from both Day and Molan – who are on stage throughout – Connor and, more surprisingly, Esme rarely get to speak for themselves, and most of our encounters with them consist of arguments between them and their mother. This robs us of any real connection with them, and of the emotional payoff we should feel when things finally begin to turn around for the family.

The pace of the play is often disorientating, moving around in time and space, and covering several years at occasionally breakneck speed, so we barely have time to process one turn of events before another is upon us. But it slows in its closing minutes, giving Tara time for a shocking final revelation, and to deliver the play’s ultimate message: the disturbing prevalence of sexual assault among women and girls across the world. Even knowing that this is the case, the statistics shared in those final moments, and the way in which they’re delivered, are enough to give anyone – male or female – pause for thought. So too is the insistence throughout on using the word rape without hesitation; only by hearing it used so baldly do we realise how frequently its use is avoided, out of shame, awkwardness or just plain fear. When It Happens to You has a strong cast and stylish, thoughtful direction, but it’s this unflinching dissection of the subject matter that will stay with you more than anything else on the train ride home.

When It Happens to You is at Park Theatre until 31st August.