WHEN there’s no way out and no way back, there’s always a trip to Long Tall Sally, a high rise office building on the edge of town, the last resort of the desperate who choose its roof as the launch pad for a journey into the debt-free, stress-free hereafter.

But anyone heading up the 40 flights of stairs has reckoned without Vera, the cleaner determined to stop the would-be jumpers. When an entire family appear on the roof it’s the final straw for Vera and she pulls out all the musical stops to save them - “better a song than a scream” after all.

In Forever in Your Debt, a co-production from Foursight Theatre Company, Warwick Arts Centre, Talking Birds and The Courtyard, the recessionary tale that unfolds is a bleak one, drawn from true stories heard throughout the company’s devising process, of a family torn apart by debt as a mother fakes her death in an avalanche, a neat metaphor for being crushed by the collapse of her empire of ‘shops of tat’. The father turns to drink and the daughters are left to their own devices with disastrously damaging consequences, but Vera still sees hope and the band plays on.

Slightly confusing at the outset, as the story moved around in time, the unfolding tragedy quickly took hold and swept the audience along to the accompaniment of music, song and a helicopter hovering above the high-rise.

Foursight can be relied on to provide thought-provoking, visually stimulating theatre and Forever in Your Debt at The Courtyard last week didn’t disappoint - it was a vibrantly inventive and satisfying piece that perfectly caught the spirit of the age, and demonstrated that debt isn’t just about money.