Review: TWENTY THOUSAND STREETS UNDER THE SKY, Southwark Playhouse
Photo credit: Mitzi de Margary
The Large at Southwark Playhouse Borough, configured in the round, is a good fit for this multi-scene adaptation based on Patrick Hamilton’s trilogy. The action of Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky is set in various flats and eating houses around Fitzrovia and Soho in the 1920s, as well as the Midnight Bell public house; its very title a portentous warning. The excellent programme introduces Patrick Hamilton to those who may know his work only from Gaslight and Rope, or not at all. Although he was not as prolific or successful as his near contemporaries, Coward and Rattigan, perhaps it is time for Hamilton’s work to be reconsidered.
Hamilton’s biographer, Sean French, highlights three aspects of the central characters in the programme: “Bob’s masochistic passion, Jenny’s self-destructive urge for gratification and Ella’s stoicism.” It is a sign of the strength of the production that all these aspects come to the fore in Simon Reade’s adaptation, directed by Matthew Iliffe.
Ellie Wintour’s minimal but effective setting includes a slightly overpowering set-piece combining pub bar and projected map, but essentially works well to indicate settings without holding up the action, and is greatly enhanced by Alex Musgrave’s lighting. The soundscape (Elizabeth Purnell) is often effective and only occasionally intrudes.
The central strength of the production is the ability of this group of actors to bring believable vulnerability to these flawed characters. Even Lucy Gray, in a trio of small parts, makes much of the opportunities she is given. Jordan Scowen, playing Bob, is by turns innocent and needy, his masochism revealed slowly as we learn the complexity of his character. As Jenny’s threatening customer George, Alex Bhat is adept at sudden sinister insinuations; never has a boiled egg been served with such underlying menace.
Rosalind Lailey’s Ella may be a less showy performance, but its quiet but powerful simplicity is entirely suited to the character. Opposite her, Michael Maloney gives a very detailed depiction of the seedy and rather disreputable Mr Eccles, his every nervous glance and raised eyebrow full of meaning. Completing the cast is Yanexi Enriquez as the doomed Jenny, seen in flashback at the beginning of her downfall and then a few years later showing what the combination of drink and prostitution has done to her. It’s a heartfelt and truthful performance, and very much the centre of the piece.
Simon Reade has created a central drama from this semi-autobiographical trilogy, which focuses on three key characters and the milieu in which they live. We met many of the same characters in Matthew Bourne’s Midnight Bell ballet, another recent re-imagining of Hamilton’s work. Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky, produced by Troupe, is a worthy successor to the same company’s adaptation of The Forsyte Saga and serves as an engrossing introduction to the work of a largely forgotten writer.
**** Four stars
Reviewed by: Chris Abbott
