Jinny is a 25 year old aspiring singer-songwriter, who has been aspiring for over a decade now. After graduating from university, she returned to Derby but her friends who remained have moved on with their lives and finding opportunities few and far between, she’s trapped in a dead-end retail job and sharing a poky flat with a pregnant pal. And over the course of just under an hour, we hear all about it, all the minutiae of a hard-working working-class life and the realisation that this might indeed be it. With songs on the guitar added.
And where Sarah Brigham’s direction really succeeds is in balancing out the Jimmy Porter-isms – the frustration at a universe that hasn’t quite panned out as planned and the violence that erupts as a result – with Jinny’s singular worldview and all its independence of spirit, a determination not to let disappointment define her. A bracing and worthy companion to Look Back in Anger.