PITCH Lake Theatre was founded in 2014 to address the lack of leading roles for Black, Asian Minority Ethnic in British theatre. Playwright Michelle Inniss cleverly uses the lyrical Trinidadian vernacular to bring a homeless old lady to life.

Evangeline Josephine Gardener spends her time in London Bridge Station selling The Big Issue. Each day she waits for Teresa, a special woman who once called her Mother; a woman who reminds her of her lost daughter. Evangeline calls her Black Swan and Teresa’s daily kindnesses cause an outpouring of good memories, as well as painful memories of physical and sexual abuse that eventually made her daughter, Shirley, (an excellent Chereen Buckley) leave home.

The action is set in an impersonal corner of a railway station complete with random announcements and a chair borrowed from the kind ladies at the sandwich shop. Designed by Amelia Jane Hankin, the space becomes a metaphor for society, for life’s journeys and those repeated lessons of love and loss made by each generation.

Bafta-nominated Cathy Tyson uses her considerable acting skills to explore Evangaline’s life. A life that is "dipped in dissatisfaction" and ripped apart by regret, she is torn between the two men in her life, God and her husband, Rodney – a man she “wouldn’t fart on cotton for he to smell”.

Poignant, heartfelt writing from Inniss and insightful directing from Cara Nolan builds an extraordinary and compelling tragic story of a life lived without a home.

Helen Brown