The streets between Soho and the West End are excellent places to get drunk. But few of us will indulge ourselves in central London like playwright and novelist Partrick Hamilton, the well-known boozer best known for his 1929 play Rope about the real-life murder of a 14-year-old boy (later turned into the classic 1948 Hitchcock film). But not to worry, one can now experience such dangerous states of inebriation in a new stage version of Hamilton’s books this autumn at Southwark Playhouse Borough.
Hamilton’s interwar trilogy of novels Twenty Thousand Streets Under The Sky sketch the energetic jazz clubs or bohemian underground bars that beam against the growth of inner-city poverty in London between the 1920s and 1930s. This adaptation by multi-award-winning dramatist Simon Reade – known for writing stage adaptations of Michael Morpurgo’s Private Peaceful and Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice – sets itself up to thrill. I was also excited to see another piece taken on by Off West End award-winning director Matthew Iliffe.
They don’t quite pull off their best work here: the script is convoluted, with four central characters who form couples at the drop of a hat. The actors don’t always feel they’re stepping to the tune of the same play. Wannabe writer and full-time bartender Bob (Jordan Scowen) falls in love with prostitute Jenny Maple (Yanexi Enriquez) but scowls a little too much for my liking and is often found standing around stage staring into space. Enriquez is more often the one to keep us entertained, hooking the audience and Bob in on every minute detail of her occasionally vulnerable, sometimes manipulative but wholly believable characterisation of Maple.
Ella Dawson (Rosalind Lailey) cleverly plays a quiet and empathetic barmaid who pines after Bob. And best of the bunch is the wily, mysterious and devilishly charming Ernest Eccles (Michael Maloney) - an impossible face not to recognize for any lover of detective dramas like Lewis, Silent Witness or Midsomer Murders on TV. Yet there isn’t enough explanation as to why these romances begin except that everybody seems to be around in Hamilton’s work.
It’s slow paced as well and the two-hour stage piece often falters only to be saved by blessed moments of sheer brilliance: magical jazz dancing, moments of intoxicated rage and touching scenes of youthful discontent. Of course, it has big boots to fill, following on from a BBC Drama adaptation 20 years ago but sadly this unevenness is all too obvious and the first half staggers, only kicked into action after the interval.
If there are twenty thousand streets under Hamilton’s grimy London sky, there certainly aren’t twenty thousand laughs. Hamilton’s work is not uplifting and he himself fell unhappily in love with a prostitute. Yet, Ellie Wintour’s set is a special bit of stagecraft with a strip of metal descending from the darkness above us at the play’s beginning to produce a map on the floor when lights are shone through it.
Still, it's a must-see for any theatre-goer who likes to be glum with this cast of broke, drunk, city-dwellers who like to spiral and make all the wrong decisions. It creates some of the best claustrophobic city atmosphere through Alex Musgrave’s lighting and Elizabeth Purcell’s sound design that I have seen in a while. But the meandering dialogue and ponderous scene changes are a drag on what is verty nearly a great play about London.
