Lorne Jackson talks to an author who captures the heady days of 70s strikes and punk in his latest play.

Job losses. Economic instability. Workers marching on the street and garbage festering in the gutter.

There’s no need to travel far to see such entropy in action.

Just flick through the pages of a local newspaper. Or, if flicking proves too troublesome, open the window a crack.

You’ll soon catch a whiff of the UK in decay.

Britain’s economic humbling can also be witnessed at close quarters in Coventry from the end of the month, when the Belgrade Theatre dramatises the fateful shift from robust Britannia to bust Britannia in a new play, Too Much Pressure.

However, the economic catastrophe depicted on stage isn’t the one playing out in 2011.

Too Much Pressure takes place in the fateful year of 1979, a time when the nation’s finances were as fatally flummoxed as they are today.

Written by local author, Alan Pollock, it’s the final instalment in the Belgrade’s Coventry trilogy of plays, which have dramatised pivotal moments in the city’s history.

The previous two episodes, One Night In November and We Love You City, examined the impact on local people of the Blitz and Coventry City’s victory in the FA Cup.

Now it’s the Winter Of Discontent that’s being put under the Belgrade microscope. A time of industrial and social strife that marked the end of the road for many of the city’s car factories.

Though not all is doom and gloom. The play also celebrates the vibrant music scene of the era, when Coventry became the centre of the pop world for a brief, thrilling moment.

Too Much Pressure follows the Austin family who live on the Canley Park estate in Coventry.

Cliff and his eldest son, Terry, are track workers at the Standard Triumph. Both are increasingly worried about their future job prospects.

However, Cliff’s youngest son, Gary, is more concerned about the music scene and forming a band with school mates Nick and Sonya (played by Holby City star, Rebecca Grant).

As industrial relations reach boiling point – and Gary’s band takes its first tentative steps – a shocking act of violence tears apart the lives of all involved.

The play promises to zing with the zest of the zeitgeist.

Though it turns out that Alan started working on it well before Britain’s economy bottomed out.