Gladiator Games, Crucible Studio, Sheffield

Mubarek's family was offered some financial compensation, but the Home Secretary at the time David Blunkett refused to meet the family; a senior prison official mooted planting a tree in Mubarek's memory.

But Mubarek's tenacious young uncle pursued the matter tirelessly through a prison service internal inquiry, an inquiry by the Commission for Racial Equality and a public inquiry (the report of that final process is expected to be published next February).

Gupta explores the dreadful events in detail, she and the director Charlotte Westenra handling the mainly verbatim material with sensitivity and ingenuity. Their cast of five is stunning, each playing several characters with energy and insight. Ray Panthaki is outstanding as both Mubarek's uncle and the victim, while Tom McKay is horribly threatening as the disturbed skinhead Robert Stewart ("a disaster waiting to happen," as one psychiatrist described him). Claire Lichie is at her best as Mubarek's mother, with Nick Bagnall and Shiv Grewal playing a range of characters.

Dialogue and action are confined mainly to a central, square set (Swallow Unit, where the murder occurred), while parts of interviews, statements and reports are narrated, in character, from a balcony. Only occasionally does the action distract from the words. The claustrophobia, shouts, footfalls, jangling keys, slamming doors and boredom paint a grim picture of life inside what became known as "a finishing school for career criminals".

Whether Mubarek's death occurred as a result of the game in which, allegedly, prison officers put opposites together to fight it out like gladiators is never clear. The incompetence and carelessness that led to this tragic event, and the racist attitudes of so many involved, unfold with great clarity. I hope Gladiator Games is taken up by television; it's a better memorial to Mubarek than a whole forest of trees.

Theatre Royal Stratford East, London E15 (020-8534 0310), today and tomorrow