By Anusree Roy. Directed by Katrina Dunn. A Touchstone Theatre production, as part of Diwali Fest. At the Cultch's VanCity Culture Lab on Friday, November 18. Continues until November 27

Brothel #9 is not always easy to watch, but it’s hard to tear your attention away from this superbly realized production.

Anusree Roy’s script is set in the courtyard of a Kolkata brothel. At the top of the play, a prostitute, Jamuna, is cooking when a younger woman named Rekha shows up, believing that her brother-in-law has gotten her a job at a bulb factory. It turns out he’s sold her to the brothel’s owner, Birbal, who exclaims upon meeting her, “Look at that face—what money is coming my way!”

Rekha is trapped, but so is everyone else. Jamuna, the brothel’s senior prostitute, is a disorienting mix of kindly advice—“Keep your money in your bra”—and venomous territoriality. Jamuna is in love with Salaudin, the local beat cop who keeps the brothel out of trouble in exchange for kickbacks; shortly after Jamuna offers Rekha to him for the first time, it’s clear that a dangerous triangle has been set up. Jamuna’s most striking quality is her equanimity about her painful situation. She sings to herself, seemingly oblivious to the screams of the new girl being raped by the man Jamuna loves. And she scoffs at Rekha’s desire to escape. “Once you come here, you are gone. Like death,” she says, with no apparent sorrow.

The acting, under Katrina Dunn’s direction, is exceptionally grounded. Apart from the parade of clients wordlessly played by Munish Sharma in a relatively thankless role, every character is a rich paradox. David Adams’s Birbal starts off as a surprisingly affable pimp—until Rekha tries to leave, and his joviality instantly pivots to genuine menace. Adele Noronha’s Rekha moves from shattered innocence to a burgeoning confidence as she begins to earn her own money and discover a kind of power. Shekhar Paleja’s Salaudin has too much complexity to be read as a pure villain, and most fascinating of all is Laara Sadiq’s Jamuna: an always-credible cocktail of generosity and selfishness, piety and debasement, clear-headedness and denial. No matter how we might judge them, at some point we feel for every one of these characters.

The design is also superb. Drew Facey’s stunner of a set presents an enormous tableau of urban decay: he fills the full height and breadth of the back wall consist with crumbling plaster, rotting wood, and exposed wires and pipes. Farnaz Khaki-Sadigh’s colourful costumes pop out of the monochromatic gloom, and Rup Sidhu’s music and Adrian Muir’s lighting enhance the emotional claustrophobia.

Without ever leaving the brothel, we come to know the desperation outside its walls, an economy of predation that is condemned by implication. The issues Brothel #9 invites us to contemplate aren’t comfortable, but they are vital.