Showing @ Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh until Sat 09 Feb

Often voted the nation’s favourite book, Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, celebrates its 200th birthday this weekend. Focused on the landed gentry Austen is known for realistic texts containing frank observations about society. While Shelagh Delaney’s stark portrayal of life focuses on the other end of the class spectrum, it provides an equally powerful commentary of the social conditions of the time. Living in their cramped, dilapidated and gloomy Salford tenement in 1958, Schoolgirl Jo (Rebecca Ryan) and her single mother Helen (Lucy Black) have a rather fractious relationship. Jo’s desire for independence is achieved when Helen accepts a marriage proposal and Jo is thrust into adulthood.

Depictions of working class struggle sprinkled with frequent allusions to death (sleeping under roses, slaughter house) would normally create quite a morbid atmosphere but Delaney’s groundbreaking script (written aged eighteen) is riddled with humour. There are wry and witty observations about the impoverished lifestyle of Salford’s proletariat and a dialogue with colourfull, sharp-tongued rhetoric that would happily transpose into a Charlie Brooker column. Director Tony Cownie offsets these lighter moments by exploiting a wide range of emotions; evoking anger, empathy, endearment and pity all within a couple of sentences. This is more than partly due to Ryan’s impeccable ability to flit between teenage angst and premature womanhood; the repartee between her and Black’s Helen is irrefutably highly enjoyable and engrossing theatre.

Like the even spread of comedy and gravity, it’s the balance of the piece that’s most apparent. Outwardly innocent, Jo personifies a changed, better future for the society she represents (her outrage at expressions of racism and homophobia) but there’s a cautious uncertainty about it. The reoccurring role reversals with Helen project a sense of unknown about the future that sensibly Delaney doesn’t commit to. Just as Helen can see Jo turning into her despite Jo’s best intentions to reform, the stark realism of Delaney’s script shows hesitancy about the ability to break away from your class or background.

Follow Callum on Twitter @CWMadge