A HUNDRED YEARS AGO IN LONDON
More than anything this is about atnosphere: Patrick Hamilton’s chronicle in three psychologcally vivid novels is distilled by Simon Reade into two-hours-ten and presented with the same sensitive ear and disciplined sharpness as this company – Troupe – brought to the superb Forsyte Saga. It’s about dreams , wanting to love, growing-up broke in a tough 1929 London: the inter-war period when suddenly the old rules and courtesies were dispensable, and anyone’s life might boom or bust. The 1920s and 1930s always hold this fascination, whether your reading tends upmarket with the bright young things or down with the desperate: whether its Mitford and Waugh or Orwell and Hamilton. This playhouse , like the Jermyn, has been adept at finding contemporaneous plays and adapting books which bring the time to life.
At its centre Bob – a lively, boyish Jordan Scowen – wants to be a writer but is a barman, and a drinker, and obsessed with the elusive prostitute Jenny who he thinks he can save from the street, persuade into a job and marry. Rosalind Lailey’s Ella, a primly lonely bar colleague, vainly loves Bob but is wooed by old Mr Eccles, given sweetly horrible pathos by Michael Moloney in a really wonderful portrait- performance: even his hats break your heart with nostalgic pity, and there’s something grimly lonely in the very line of his raincoat-belt . Desperate Jazz-Age gaiety in the music and a bleakly evocative set in the round create rising atmosphere. The tone is immaculate in dialogue and manner: England’s emotional history unrolls in both Eccles’ dated gallantries and in the sadistic, manipulatively cad George who set Jenny on the bad path years ago and leaves wreckage in every life life he touches, or runs over with his car.
The second -half’s scenes between the couples are tremendous, Yanexi Enriquez rising to a hard reality as Jenny, who can’t quite bring herself to leave the streets for a maid’s job, and is easy fodder for the appalling George. Even in boxers and sock-suspenders Alex Bhat manages to be terrifying: properly frightening in his insouciant scorn. . It’s stylish, dark, inconclusive and almost unredeemed although Ella’s courage in turning away from the convenience of marrying poor awful old Eccles is a beautiful relief once you have been drawn into involvement in the possibility.
Which I was: and remembered that Patrick Hamilton also wrote Gaslight, providing us with a verb and a concept of treachery forever. Brr. All brilliantly done: one of the most affordable tickets to see damn good acting and production in the capital today.
southwarkplayhouse.co.uk to 17th October
rating 4
