Troupe stages Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky in London — SkimNews
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- Simon Reade's stage adaptation of Patrick Hamilton's trilogy Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky interweaves the three novels' narratives rather than presenting them in sequence, drawing parallels between the lonely characters' imbalanced relationships.
- Matthew Iliffe directs the Troupe production at Southwark Playhouse Borough, running until 17 October, with Jordan Scowen as waiter Bob, Rosalind Lailey as barmaid Ella, and Yanexi Enriquez as sex worker Jenny.
- The story follows Bob, who begins flush with £80 and ends broke and hungover after his obsession with Jenny, while Ella is courted by older suitor Ernest, played by Michael Maloney.
- Ellie Wintour's sparse set uses a pulley-lowered bar counter and stools that rearrange into a bed, while Elizabeth Purnell's soundscape captures Hamilton's described "grim, yet burdened and plaintive" London, lit by Alex Musgrave as fog, smoke and gas lamps.
- Sam Spencer-Lane's movement direction and queasy lighting heighten Jenny's formative sadistic encounter with a stranger, George (played by Alex Bhat), staged in flashback.
- The reviewer finds the production "engrossing" but says it loses the novels' obsessive inner wrangling over social status and detailed pub atmosphere, and that more menace is needed to capture Hamilton's "jaundiced prose."
Why it matters: Hamilton is best known for his thrillers Rope and Gaslight, so this staging draws renewed attention to his lesser-known 1920s London trilogy about working-class loneliness and desire. The adaptation's core trade-off — gaining thematic parallels by interweaving the three novels but losing the obsessive interiority and squalor that gave Hamilton's prose its power — frames how faithful the show is to the source material.
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