Review: CONFESSIONAL, Southwark Playhouse, 7 October 2016

Pubs are sometimes transformed into theatres (at least their upstairs rooms are) but seldom can a theatre have been so convincingly transformed into a pub, Justin Williams's set design team creating exactly the sort of grubby bar I used to frequent before they became Wetherspoonses or All Bar Ones. You buy a pint, make yourself comfortable, admire scenic pictures on the walls and, almost without warning, comes a wailing from the Ladies and we're off.

This Southend boozer (for Southwark is Southend for one night only) isn't far from its town's primary seaside attraction, the old-fashioned funfair, Treasure Island, where we used to take the kids when they were young. It was solidly working-class Essex then (and no doubt still is) with no food left unfried and no arm left untattooed. The source of those sobs lives in a flat at that funfair - Violet - and she is hiding from alpha-female, caravan-dwelling beautician Leona, whose on-off relationship with walking cock, Bill, is making nobody very happy.

We find out plenty about these three (and an ageing gay with a penchant for young straights, a backstreet abortionist and the bar staff too) as they come amongst us, finding spaces where they can, sitting at tables, rushing in and out of the saloon - it really does feel like a real pub.

Of course, in a real pub, such characters would not be given to bursts of lyricism between the rows and the regrets, because Tennessee Williams didn't often wash up on the Costa Essex. But his words fit these damaged people and jar only very occasionally, the language stretching across the Atlantic very successfully, the accents location appropriate - innit? - under Jack Silver's confident directing.

There's much to admire beyond the set: Simone Somers-Yeates convinces as poor Violet, never short of a quick handjob in return for a modicum of attention, Gavin Brocker gets the strut and swagger of the fading stud just right, and there are a couple of well-observed cameos from Tim Harker as the middle-aged gay writer (who might that be I wonder?) and Abi McLoughlin as Doc, weighed down by her chosen occupation of dangerous destruction.

Lizzie Stanton's Leona grabs the er... lion's share of the lines and our eyes never leave her. It's a performance overflowing with energy and emotion, but there's something that didn't quite work for me. Though the crop top and denim micro-mini are just right, the absence of skin-ink did not fit (see above) and there was something in the walk, in the straightness of her carriage, that underpinned the bravura with a confidence that Leona probably didn't possess. I never quite believed that this woman was part of the human flotsam that moves from rundown coastal town to rundown coastal town eking out a living at the margins of the land and the people.

Performed all-through in a gruelling 90 minutes or so, it's an exhilarating, immersive experience but, for all the wit of the language that sometimes surfaces and the pathos evoked by the scarred, scared lives on show, I couldn't shake the thought that they should all be on the Jeremy Kyle Show, the coarseness underwhelming all other elements by the end.

Confessional continues at Southwark Playhouse until 29 October.

Photos Simon Annand

To post a comment, you must register and login.