PODCAST REVIEW: SALLY.

LESS isn’t loss: Zara Day performs ‘Sally’ in The End of the Line.

SALLY HAS JUST broken up with James. He was the boyfriend everyone, including herself,  has deemed completely lovely. This is her brief, crisp tale, beautifully delivered by Zara Day reflecting on what a young woman faces in a traditional heterosexual relationship.

In just over 10 succinct minutes, the work is easy on the ear, written and performed with a frankness that makes you instinctively like Sally for her boldness. You soon realise that it’s her inner voice speaking and she wouldn’t have the gumption to so cheekily answer those who sit on the margins of her life, judging, asking questions and making assumptions and commentaries about milestones she may or may not be achieving. Or may or may not even want to achieve.

The first in an interesting initiative of pieces about women and childlessness, this podcast is like a field daisy. It’s beautiful and strong with the energy of being alive, but it is also light and feisty. It’s not quite a card-carrying feminist voice, but rather an instinctive one that echoes the sentiment in Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own, with contemporary cogency and not without a sense of fierce daring, clutching that inner thread of personal happiness for all its worth. Even if it may not be worth much in the eyes of the world.

It’s not a rant, however, but a delicate piece of social commentary about holding on to your birth name and staving off the idea of ‘starting one’s own tribe’. Simple, clear, to the point. Best kind of podcast there is. Listen to it here.

• Sally is written and directed by Mark Heywood and features technical input by Hetty Hodgson. With music by Daisy Chute and Cerian of the Heard Collective, it is performed by Zara Day and is the first in a series of 12 podcasts about women and their choices around having children collectively called The End of the Line.