Harald Speirs

The streets between Soho and the West End are excellent places to get drunk. But few of us will indulge ourselves in central London like playwright and novelist Partrick Hamilton, the well-known boozer best known for his 1929 play Rope about the real-life murder of a 14-year-old boy (later turned into the classic 1948 Hitchcock film). But not to worry, one can now experience such dangerous states of inebriation in a new stage version of Hamilton’s books this autumn at Southwark Playhouse Borough.  Hamilton’s interwar trilogy of novels Twenty Thousand Streets Under The Sky sketch the energetic jazz clubs or bohemian underground bars that beam against the growth of inner-city poverty in London between the 1920s and 1930s. This adaptation by multi-award-winning dramatist Simon Reade – known for writing stage adaptations of Michael Morpurgo’s Private Peaceful and Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice – sets itself up to thrill. I was also excited to see another piece taken on by Off West End award-winning director Matthew Iliffe.  They don’t quite pull off their best work here: the script is convoluted, with four central characters who form couples at the drop of a hat. The actors don’t always feel they’re stepping to the tune of the same play. Wannabe writer and full-time bartender Bob (Jordan Scowen) falls in love with prostitute Jenny Maple (Yanexi Enriquez) but scowls a little too much for my liking and is often found standing around stage staring into space. Enriquez is more oft