Every parent lives with an underlying hum of fear during their child’s teenage years.
What inspirations and distortions is their child inhaling from their phone and their peers? Are home and school healthy and supportive environments … or porous, vulnerable ones? What if their child falls prey to someone who just isn’t what they seem? And what if their love and care are not enough to protect the child?
With Romeo Pimp, on stage at the King Black Box and directed and designed by Sophie Ann Rooney, playwright Jesse McQueen forces these fears into the open and elaborates their most heart-rending consequences. With claustrophobic intensity and unflinching honesty powered by meticulous research, she opens our eyes to the reality of human trafficking. It is not some unfortunate but occasional misstep that is experienced in other communities by far-away others. Rather, it’s something that happens right next door: the victims are young girls we know, and the traffickers are often in plain sight.
Romeo Pimp is the story of Jamie, an average high school senior whose world tilts when she falls for Ryan, a boy from a nearby school. Played with remarkable sensitivity by emerging actor Charlotte Salisbury, Jamie blossoms under the attention of someone who makes her feel seen and chosen. What begins as a tender first romance slowly transforms into something more insidious. As Ryan (Agape Mngomezulu) becomes increasingly possessive and controlling, Jamie grows distant from her family and friends. Her best friend Paige (a terrific athena kaitlin trinh) notices the change, but Jamie is caught in Ryan’s orbit. The love story unravels into a chilling exploration of “Romeo pimping,” a form of trafficking in which affection, intimacy and trust become weapons of manipulation.
The ensemble delivers across the board. Salisbury carries the play with considerable range, moving from awkward girlish giddiness (an early bedroom dancing scene is a charmingly painful watch) to infatuation, intoxication, confusion, fear, and despair. Mngomezulu keeps us almost as off-balance and uncertain as Jamie. His Ryan deploys a disarming mix of charm, authenticity and lack of agency — which make his control all the more convincing and horrifying. Juliette Diodati shines as Michaela, another victim who shows us exactly where Jamie is headed. And Sam Wexler brings a dark, driving charisma to Ryan’s cousin Shane, who knows exactly what to do to get exactly what he wants — and pivots seamlessly from sweet nothings, empty promises and good-time partying to calculated menace and manipulation.
Meanwhile, trinh provides a vital counterpoint as Paige, anchoring the audience firmly in the world of school and ambition that Jamie is losing. And Brennan Bielefeld offers an endearingly grounded turn as Connor, Jamie’s annoying but concerned younger brother. Finally, playwright McQueen herself and Jack Creaghan’s thoughtful turns as caring adults illuminate starkly the terrible ripple effects of Jamie’s transformation. And the humanity infused in each actor’s performance ensures the play avoids caricature, even as it confronts stark, high-stakes realities.
The King Black Box’s small size works powerfully in service of the production. The main part of the stage is Jamie’s bedroom, and it feels like we are right inside it, watching her life unravel in real time. Characters pop right into the space to act out their text messages to Jamie – and the real bedroom window at the back of the stage becomes a vehicle for an increasing flow of real-life visitors. This claustrophobic intimacy ratchets up the tension and discomfort, reminding us that the boundaries between private and public, and safety and danger, are more fragile and less defined than we might like to believe. Tactical entrances and exits – to the different worlds behind the doors at stage right and left – map the heartbreaking moment when this collapse is finalized, and its messy aftermath. And along the way, Rooney’s direction uses every inch of the entire venue: actors move through aisles, shift furniture, and reposition themselves, pushing against suffocating spatial limitations which are as metaphorical as they are literal.
This immersive staging draws us right into Jamie’s psyche, collapsing the distance between observer and participant. McQueen’s script is both extensively researched and profoundly human. Her writing was guided by Dramaturgy Consultant Ferron Delcy and Lived Experience Expert and Ethical Storytelling Consultant Jessa Crisp, a survivor of sex trafficking whose perspective helped ensure that the play’s treatment of grooming and exploitation was both accurate and respectful, and grounded in lived experience. The script captures not only the mechanics of grooming, but also its emotional complexity. In the process, it puts a disquieting face to statistics and stories that too often feel abstract, some of which are collaged in newspaper clippings that have been pasted right onto the theatre’s ceiling. Their message – and the play’s – is that human trafficking happens right here in Canada, and is more prevalent than we realize. And the victims are often ordinary teenagers like Jamie, who lives with two caring parents, has friends, and is loved and valued.
To its great credit, the play never slips into didacticism. It unfolds within the recognizable rhythms of real life — music, laundry, drop-offs, school musicals, math tests and teen parties. And each of Jamie’s individual choices has a frightening teenage reasonabilty to it. By grounding its narrative in her experience, Romeo Pimp communicates the trauma of systemic abuse with immediacy and compassion. And while several members of the audience were in tears at the performance I attended, it’s important to note that the play does not leave audiences in despair. The production makes space for resilience, pointing toward the possibility of recovery and healing.
Produced by The King Black Box with One East Productions, Romeo Pimp skilfully balances artistry with advocacy. It is certainly not an easy show — and rightly so. The discomfort it provokes is a necessary reminder of the fragility of the line between safety and danger. And its balance of warning and hope makes the show both an eye-widening cautionary tale and an urgent community call to action.
Romeo Pimp continues at the King Black Box until October 5, 2025. Tickets are available at thekingblackbox.com.
© Arpita Ghosal, Sesaya Arts Magazine 2025
