Based on Patrick Hamilton’s trilogy of the same name, this play starts with Bob, who wants to be a novelist but works as a barman, walking the streets after his girlfriend has stood him up.
In another part of the city the girl, a prostitute, is coaxing more money from a client. Bob gave her money to go away with him but she has spent it all. Thus, in the first minutes, we see the inevitable course of this story which is based on Hamilton’s own infatuation with a sex worker when he was a barman in a London pub.
The prostitute, Jenny, is played with grace and sincerity by Yanexi Enriquez as a both winsome and vulgar woman, ‘I took the wrong turning, dearie,’ she says, ‘got in with the wrong crowd.’ One section of this play is her story, of being seduced with whiskey when she had a respectable job to start the following day. Her seducer is played with extravagant voraciousness by Alex Bhat, standing both ridiculous and diabolical in his vest and sock suspenders.
Bob and Jenny’s relationship is contrasted with that of Ella, also working at The Midnight Bell with Bob, and Ernest Eccles, a pompous but endearing man who comes into the bar and tries to woo her with old-style charm. She is in love with Bob but he scarcely acknowledges her; she refers to prostitutes as ‘creatures,’ she does not comprehend how Bob could possibly reject her in favour of Jenny.
Correspondingly Mr Eccles is stumped as to how Ella could reject even a loveless marriage with the security and freedom from work it would bring. ‘What is going on in her pretty little head now?’ he says, revealing his creepy desire to give her ‘a kiss or a good spanking.’ That they are hopelessly unsuited is as is blank to him as Bob’s failure to realise that Jenny will spend his life savings and dump him.
Character is foremost in a play about loneliness and desire presented on a bare set with a minimum of props. The cast play it out brilliantly, but ultimately the script is flat with no life-shaking reversals, just a simple representation of unrequited love in unsuitable relationships which would never work. As it is based on the original writer’s real experiences, it could be expected to be more heart-rending but in fact leaves us thinking depressingly: ‘Oh, yes, that’s life.’
Venue: Southwark Playhouse
Writer: Patrick Hamilton adapted by Simon Reade
Director: Matthew Iliffe
Cast: Jordan Scowen, Yanexi Enriquez, Michael Maloney, Rosalind Lailey
Duration: Two hours five minutes with twenty minute interval
Until: 17 October 2026