Vault Chapter 01 — Jenny’s Tale: Shakespeare in the Streets

Curator’s note: This is the first of three connected pieces – Jenny’s Tale, Screech’s Tale, and Violet’s Tale. Each works as a standalone story, but together they build something bigger. I’m analyzing them separately because each deserves its own space, but keep in mind: this is Act One of a trilogy.

The Stage is Set

It’s a quiet, dark night on an empty street somewhere in London City. That’s how Ren opens Jenny’s Tale – no dramatic flourish, no moral signposting, just a camera settling on an empty stage. If you’ve seen the video above, you’ll know this isn’t filmed in a studio. It’s shot in actual street alleyways at night – filmed in Brighton, telling a London story – graffiti-tagged walls on both sides, Ren sitting with his guitar in a single continuous take.

The performance method matters. Ren’s talked about being inspired by Victoria – a 2015 German film that follows a woman through a Berlin heist in one unbroken 140-minute shot. No cuts, no safety net, just the camera following the characters through streets, clubs, and chaos until the whole thing combusts. Victoria is worth watching if you want to understand what Ren’s attempting here: that same breathless intimacy where you can’t look away because the performance is happening right now, in real time, with real stakes.

When Ren performs Jenny’s Tale in a cold alleyway in one take, the concrete isn’t a set. The graffiti isn’t art direction. The occasional distant sound of traffic isn’t a sound effect. He’s making theatre where theatre began – in the streets, with nothing between performer and audience except the story itself.

And the story he’s telling? It’s old as time. Two people, one night, fate moving them toward each other like pieces on a board.

Two Lives on a Collision Course

The opening verse gives us Jenny: walking home alone, dragging her feet, wanting to escape. “She knew this town, she knew this floor / Because she’d walked it about a thousand times before.” That repetition – the same streets, the same route, the same life grinding her down – that’s the trap. She’s not kidnapped or forced. She’s just tired. Stuck. Going through motions she’s performed a thousand times before.

Then the scene cuts. Same night, different place, different person: “There walked a hooded young youth by the name of James / He was 14 years old and out of his brain.”

Fourteen. Not sixteen, not eighteen. Fourteen years old.

I spent three decades working as a mental health nurse, most of it in acute settings where I met a lot of kids like James. The ones who get nicknamed “Screech” by their mates. Quick on their feet, already smoking weed to numb whatever’s eating at them, already carrying a blade because the streets taught them that’s what survival looks like. The song tells us straight: “He was a liar, a thief at fourteen years old / The devil had set his sights on his soul.”

That devil language might read as metaphor, but Ren’s not being subtle here. Whether you take it literally or as street mythology, the point is clear: this kid is already lost. Already possessed by something bigger than himself – poverty, neglect, violence, call it what you want. At fourteen, James is “out of his brain” and carrying a knife, and that trajectory doesn’t happen by accident.

This is where the Shakespeare comparison really clicks in. Think of Romeo and Juliet – not the romance, but the structure. Two households, both alike in dignity. Two young people moving through their separate lives until fate crosses their paths. We, the audience, can see both sides. We know what’s coming. They don’t.

Ren does the same thing here. Jenny walks home. James walks the streets. The camera cuts between them – or rather, Ren’s words do, his voice shifting perspective like a Greek chorus narrating two parallel tragedies. And we know, even before they meet, that this won’t end well.

When Fear Becomes Reality

“As Jenny walked home all alone, she felt scared / Usually she was alright / But it was like there was something in the air.”

I love this bit. Ren doesn’t explain the fear. He doesn’t rationalize it. Jenny just feels it – “divine intervention” or “intuition,” she doesn’t know which. Something’s wrong. The air feels different. And then the music shifts, the rhythm tightens:

“Sirens sound in the distance to the beat of Jenny’s feet / A symphony of the night that echoes crime on London’s streets.”

Those sirens aren’t in the performance audio, by the way. If you watch the video, it’s just Ren and his guitar in that alley. The sirens exist in the story, in our heads. We build the soundscape from his words. That’s pure theatre – creating an entire world from nothing but voice and rhythm.

“Jenny turns a corner, their eyes, they meet / Our poor girl Jenny and a boy named Screech.”

Notice the name shift? He was James in the setup. Now he’s Screech. The street name, the persona, the thing he’s become rather than who he was born as. That matters.

The Moment Everything Breaks

What follows is brutal in its efficiency. Screech demands money. Jenny freezes – “statue like, a lady shaped stalagmite / Fear like liquid nitrogen in the dark night.” That image is perfect: stalagmite, something that forms over centuries, layer by layer, in darkness. Jenny isn’t just scared; she’s transformed into stone, into something that can’t move, can’t speak, can’t save herself.

And Screech interprets her silence as defiance. “What the hell you playing at? You playing games with me?” He’s fourteen, high, scared himself probably, and her stillness reads as disrespect. The violence escalates in seconds:

“Screech reached for the sheath of the blade with the teeth / That could bite through steel and slice concrete / And he swung possessed, with the devil in his chest / And the statue she was turned to, butter in a breath.”

Possessed. Devil in his chest. These aren’t casual metaphors. Ren’s describing dissociation, the moment when the person disappears and the trauma response takes over. I’ve seen it clinically – the glaze in the eyes, the mechanical movements, the complete disconnect from consequence. Whether you call it possession or PTSD or drug-induced psychosis doesn’t matter. The effect is the same: a fourteen-year-old boy just killed someone, and he wasn’t fully present when he did it.

The Cruelest Echo

Then the opening verse returns, but everything’s changed:

“It was a quiet dark night on an empty street / Somewhere in London city / Jenny laid still on the cold concrete / She’s found somewhere to sleep.”

She knew this floor. She’d walked it a thousand times before. Now she’s lying on it. The street that was her routine, her trap, her exhaustion – now it’s her grave.

And that final line: “I guess that she escaped, it’s such a shame.”

Jesus.

Jenny wanted to escape. The song told us that in verse one. She was dragging her feet, tired of the same streets, the same life. And she did escape – just not the way anyone would want. She escaped the repetition, the exhaustion, the grinding sameness. Through death.

That’s the tragedy Ren’s built. Not a moral lesson. Not a cautionary tale. Just two people trapped by circumstance, crossing paths at the worst possible moment, and one of them doesn’t walk away.

Why This Feels Like Shakespeare

I called this chapter “Shakespeare in the Streets” not because Ren quotes the Bard, but because the bones of this story follow the same architecture. Clear the stage. Set the scene. Introduce two parallel lives. Cross their paths. Show the cost.

Classical tragedy works because it takes ordinary people and shows how easily their lives can shatter. No villains twirling mustaches. No heroes saving the day. Just humans making choices – or having choices made for them – and the consequences playing out with terrible inevitability.

Jenny isn’t a perfect victim. She’s just tired. Screech isn’t a monster. He’s fourteen, neglected, already drowning. The tragedy isn’t that evil won. It’s that neither of them stood a chance.

And Ren delivers this story in a single take, on a cold street, with nothing but his voice and guitar. No studio polish. No second chances. Just like the violence he’s describing – it happens once, in real time, and you don’t get to edit it afterward.

That’s the thing about real trauma, real violence. I saw it for thirty years in mental health wards and emergency departments. It doesn’t come with retakes or perfect lighting. It happens in ugly places, to ordinary people, and the aftermath is just silence and cold concrete.

Ren knows this. The performance proves it. And that’s why Jenny’s Tale hits so hard – because underneath the poetry and the rhythm and the Shakespeare echoes, it’s telling the truth.

Next: Screech’s Tale – Hubris, Justice, and the Bard