A wish list on a commercial web site such as Amazon may be composed of items which are at once apparently banal and undistinguished yet in reality fantastically unlikely to be granted. Tamsin’s wish list consists of being permitted to keep working in an Amazon-like concern’s packing warehouse on a zero-hours contract under conditions seemingly designed to keep the workforce feeling permanently precarious, and of her brother Dean being treated with any perceptible degree of humanity by the disability allowance assessment system. Dean suffers from obsessive compulsive disorder to a degree which renders him non-functional outside the siblings’ cramped flat; Tamsin can’t guide him through the benefits “reconsideration” process because employees’ phones are forbidden on the work floor.

Katherine Soper’s debut play, which won the 2015 Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting, rigorously eschews rhetoric, melodrama or explicit agitprop. Tamsin’s breaking-point cry of “This isn’t fucking fair!” may resonate with us, but it emerges entirely naturally from her experiences and utterances rather than being calculatedly deployed like the “Attention must be paid” of Death Of A Salesman.

Matthew Xia’s production (seen at the Royal Exchange in Manchester last autumn) is likewise unfussy (except for a misjudged musical accompaniment to an act of self-harm by Dean). Erin Doherty and Joseph Quinn keep tight control of their respective characters’ stresses, never for instance overdoing the talismanic patterns of knuckle-raps they execute as a calming tactic. Shaquille Ali-Yebuah offers firm support as a workmate of Tamsin’s and former schoolmate of Dean’s who opens up before her emotional and intellectual possibilities; the core of their tentative relationship is Doherty’s unlikely yet committed rendition of Meat Loaf’s “I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That)”. Aleksandar Mikic takes care not to let the line manager become simply an impersonal figure with a token humanising sidelight.

Ana Inés Jabares-Pita’s set design makes its own points, with the roller belts of the warehouse creeping across the stage space to encroach physically on the living space just as work pressures do on Tamsin’s life. The play may lack the intensity of a Ken Loach film, but its motivating spirit is the same: this isn’t fucking fair, and attention must be paid.

Written for the Financial Times.