Within the Fringe, Red Like Fruit is a challenging proposition: two performers, a male and a female, address the ways in which patriarchal abuses force emotional and moral betrayals of the self. With the male speaking the woman’s words, it traces a personal history of discreet incidents which have festered before being brought into dramatic focus by a journalistic investigation into a political scandal.

The sparseness of its staging exposes the apparent simplicity of the moral conundrums that the woman has experienced: assaults by a stranger and a cousin, and the silencing of her reactions by a social consensus that wants trauma to become mere happenstance. Yet if each incident is bluntly and obviously abuse, fear of stigma, familial unity and a bland acceptance of male power complicates the woman’s relationship to her own past and occludes her righteous disgust.

At times harrowing, the script is lent calmness and intimacy in the exchanges between these performers, meandering between intensity and more reflective passages. In the bustle of the Fringe, such seriousness demands more attention, unpacking subtle ways in which male voices dominate female experience, while the framing of its story evokes wider implications of these personal injustices.

Red Like Fruit, Traverse Theatre, until 24 August, times vary; main picture: Dahlia Katz.