The Fruit Trilogy, Barber Studio, West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds, tonight and tomorrow, 8pm. Box office: 0113 213 7700 or at wyp.org.uk EVE Ensler's Avocado emerged from the very dark in its low-key debut in a Leeds rehearsal studio as part of the West Yorkshire Playhouse's A Play, A Pie And A Pint season last year.

Reminiscent of confessional Greek tragedies and Samuel Beckett's minimalist bleak monologues, Avocado was confrontational, jolting "tornado theatre" that was as spent as actress Rebecca Grant after 30 torrid, horrid minutes. A pre-show pie and a pint soon turned to queasy when buffeted and shaken by Tony Award winner Ensler's half hour of darkness seeking the light, as she depicted a young, nameless woman's perilous journey towards freedom.

Avocado now sits in the middle of The Fruit Trilogy, joined on the shelf by two rather more absurdist Ensler short pieces for a 75-minute triple bill that made its debut at the Southbank Theatre's Women of the World festival – or WOW for short – in London and now takes over the Playhouse's Barber Studio.

Put the three together and they form Ensler's coruscating dissection of how we treat and mistreat women's bodies, refracted through the issues of sexual abuse, human trafficking, refugee plight and body image.

There wasn't a Pomegranate, Avocado or Coconut in sight on the preview night, but the studio was so stifling it would have ripened any fruit. It may not have been ideal for the audience – indeed one woman fainted, and no-one should suffer that much for their art – but it added to the intense heat and airless compression that emanates from global activist Ensler's polemical brand of theatre.

The night opens with Pomegranate, where two women, Amelia Donkor's Item 1 and Carla Harrison-Hodge Item 2, are on the shelf: sex workers for sale, each with a price tag attached, only their wigged heads on show, like in a Beckett monologue, as they natter to the accompaniment of anodyne supermarket muzak. Brief, blunt, awkwardly humorous yet troubling too, it is the better of the new fruits.

Avocado is somewhat diminished by its new surroundings, and where Mark Rosenblatt's premiere benefited from remaining in near darkness in Paul Lovett's lighting, his new version is neither as well acted by Harrison-Hodge, nor as dark in Lizzie Powell's lighting. This lessens the full horror of a woman secreted away on a cargo ship, seeking to escape to a place called Asylum from a life of poverty and sexual exploitation, in a container of rotting avocados.

Less fruitful, if you will excuse the pun, is the closing Coconut, which reminds you how Ensler can overcook things, just as she did in The Vagina Monologues. Here, Amelia Donkor is asked to expose herself emotionally and physically while massaging herself in emollient coconut oil, but she has to go through the pain barrier, much like the audience listening to Ensler's babble-bath, a full-frontal diatribe that reaches its point of hope too late.

The Fruit Trilogy, Barber Studio, West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds, tonight at 8pm. Box office: 0113 213 7700 or at wyp.org.uk