Confessional at Southwark Playhouse - first images released
Preview by Lizzie Guilfoyle
THE first images have been released of the cast for the London premiere of Tennesee Williams’ Confessional. To view them, click here.
Previously Posted: Following a critically-acclaimed run at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2015, Tramp Theatre’s production of Tennesee Williams’ Confessional transfers to London – to Southwark Playhouse where it runs from Wednesday, October 5 to Saturday, October 29, 2016.
Tramp’s innovative, semi-immersive production reimagines Williams’ little known play in “Monk’s Bar”, a run-down British seaside bar on the Essex coast, frequented by life’s flotsam and jetsam. The audience are seated in the pub with the locals while the action kicks off around them.
Join the bar’s regulars over the course of one furious and fun evening, as a pair of strangers enters their world – and all hell breaks loose.
The action focuses around Leona Dawson, a caravan park beautician who discovers her layabout boyfriend has been cheating on her with her mentally ill best friend. To add insult to injury, it’s also the anniversary of her younger brother’s death.
With alcohol-fuelled emotions already running high, tensions increase when a pair of gay men come into the bar, one of whom reminds Leona of her dead brother, who was also gay. As Leona gets drunker she alternates between ranting at the regulars, bragging about her self sufficiency and her itinerant life in a caravan, and listening to the two strangers tell stories about the experience of being homosexual – something she knows will irritate her homophobic friends.
According to press material, Confessional is like an episode of EastEnders, written by Tennessee Williams!
Directed by Jack Silver, Confessional, Williams’ first play to feature an openly gay character, receives its London professional premiere at Southwark Playhouse.
Silver says: “You don’t know until the very end, which of your fellow drinkers/audience members has a speaking part. I want the audience to feel unsafe, I want them to have a physical reaction to the play which means something in their instinct compels them to watch. When you sit on the Underground and there’s a sketchy guy on the train, you have to watch him, even out of the corner of your eye. Because something deep within you says that if you don’t watch out, you might not be safe. I’m trying to recreate that instinct, to compel you to watch.”
The cast includes Lizzie Stanton, reprising her critically-acclaimed role as Leona, Rob Ostlere (best known for playing Arthur Digby for three years in Holby City and Waymar Royce in Game of Thrones), Gavin Brocker (Mapp & Lucia, Beautiful Thing), with Raymond Bethley, Simone Somers-Yeates, and AF McLoughlin also returning and newcomers Jack Archer and Alex Kiffin.
Tennessee Williams was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American playwright, and is considered one of the greatest playwrights of the 20th Century. After years of obscurity, he became suddenly famous with The Glass Menagerie (1944), closely reflecting his own unhappy family background. This heralded a string of successes, including A Streetcar Named Desire (1947), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955), and Sweet Bird of Youth (1959).
Produced by Remy Blumenfeld, Confessional has set design by Justin Williams.
Tickets: Previews (October 5 and 6): all tickets £12. From October 7: £20, £16 concessions. To book, call the box office on 020 7407 0234 or visit southwarkplayhouse.co.uk/.
Times: Monday to Saturday at 8pm; Tuesday and Saturday matinees at 3.30pm.
The professional European première of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Allegro continues at Southwark Playhouse until September 10, 2016.