★★★

“sparkles with wit and nostalgia and a precarious kind of longing”

John does have a point. You’d be hard pushed to fit eighty-six candles on a small birthday cake. So, he made do with one. Betty still complains, however, even though John was up in the early hours baking the cake from scratch. But it’s not about the candle, really. Nor the cake. The cake is symbolic. Its fresh ingredients contrast with the fusty features of a marriage. It is Betty’s birthday – she is a year older than her eighty-five-year-old husband, but her dour expression belies a greater chasm. She spends a lot of time grumbling.

John (John Rayment) is a writer with a shelf full of his published works. Betty (Mary Tillett), an artist. Thery both appear to have enjoyed success in their chosen field, but their creativity has, at last, dried up. Decades ago, they made a pact: when their creative lives were over, they would choose to end their own lives. Together. The time has come to test whether they are going to fulfil this early promise.

Many themes are explored along the way in Tim Stubbs Hughes’ two-hander. The longevity of human connection, ageing, creativity and, above all, the right to choose how we live and ultimately how – and when – we leave this world. It seems that John and Betty have no more memories to build. Their house has boxes full of them and their minds are overflowing. Betty no longer believes in her art. John thinks he hasn’t written anything worthwhile for years. The time seems right. The main gripe I have with this play is that we are half expecting (even urging) John to look up from his newspaper and say, “you go ahead, dear, I’ll follow on later”.

It is hard to warm to Betty’s character which weakens somewhat the intense bond we are supposed to detect between the couple. Mary Tillett’s performance is steeped in naturalism and integrity in which frustration and anger dominate, burying the tenderness that is essential to fully draw us in. John Rayment has a seemingly lighter task as John, yet he finds more nuance. His patience discovers it is not limitless after all, while he decides he doesn’t have to spend all his time appeasing Betty. The fact that they are each given lengthy monologues, while the other is offstage, suggests that they are not quite as intimate as Stubbs Hughes would like us to believe. John has taken to watching television alone at night. When they roll the dice to determine a date for their suicide pact, the crackling emotion is missing.

What this show has in abundance, however, is a poetry of language that the duo deliver with a stop-start musicality. Director Julia Stubbs cues the pauses on the right beat while the dialogue has the rhythms of a rhapsody. The tempo shifts from ballad to protest song; sometimes sad, sometimes full of angst. A description of sunlight on the bedroom wall is full of melancholy and, as they pack away the material clutter of their lives, we are reminded of Stoller and Leiber’s song of disillusionment ‘Is That All There Is?’.

“Will we be missed?” they ask. ‘Will they miss each other?’ is the question we ask. Betty has plenty to get off her shoulder, but she shares it with the audience rather than with John. How she nearly left him, for example. John discovers an early abandoned short story that he feels inspired to return to. Is that enough to call off their pact? You know I’m not going to reveal whether they go through with it or not. But I can reveal that there are some sharp reflections on life as John and Betty wade through their past, looking for themselves.

Two boxes are labelled in Latin; ‘cremanda’ (to burn) and ‘servanda’ (to be kept), into which they pack away their memorabilia. What are echoes of the past and what is just clutter? “And I Looked at the Sky” takes its time to explore its key themes, and we have to separate the clutter from the gems. But when it shines, it sparkles with wit and nostalgia and a precarious kind of longing.

TWENTY THOUSAND STREETS UNDER THE SKY

Southwark Playhouse Borough

★★★★

“gorgeously fluid and dreamlike”

On the surface, Patrick Hamilton’s trilogy of novels, “Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky”, could be quite a depressing read. Written between 1929 and 1934, we are spared no details of grief, unrequited love, poverty, desperation, betrayal, deceit and humiliation. ‘Love’ is the saving grace for the characters that meander within the novel’s pages, set against the backdrop of a 1930’s Soho. But love is elusive, so money becomes the object that may ultimately change their lives. It is testament to Hamilton’s writing that the reader is uplifted rather than downtrodden. Sometimes considered to be the twentieth century’s successor to Charles Dickens, his prose creates an elaborate atmosphere, full of colourful characters that we feel compassion for, despite their faults.

It is a tough act to translate this to the stage, and to capture the conflicting emotions of its protagonists. Simon Reade’s adaptation rises to the challenge with what appears to be little effort. But don’t be fooled. There are many tricks up his sleeve which he empties onto the bare stage, not least picking out the essential details and characters to condense the stories into a two-hour saga. Performed in the round, we witness every interaction from all angles and, even if we are not familiar with the narrative (though it helps) we become instantly absorbed in the fates of its anti-heroes.

“Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky” focuses on three people whose stories interconnect across the three novels of the trilogy. ‘The Midnight Bell’ is Bob’s story, a waiter at the pub who becomes infatuated with Jenny; a prostitute on whom he squanders his life savings. ‘The Siege of Pleasure’, the second book, shows us Jenny’s backstory and the pivotal moments that nudged her into her chosen profession. ‘The Plains of Cement’ runs parallel to ‘The Midnight Bell’ and focuses on the barmaid Ella, whose unrequited love for Bob encourages her to consider seeking solace in a man she does not love. Under Matthew Iliffe’s meticulous direction, the cast bring these lonely misfits and their stories to vivid life, drawing our empathy like a barfly at a whisky optic. Their lives are degrading, but they serve up the same measures of optimism inherent in the books.

Jordan Scowen’s waiter, Bob, bookends the play with a paraphrase of Hamilton’s sweeping aphorism about ‘man’ that encapsulates the mood. ‘You can embitter and torment them from birth… yet there is one thing you cannot do. You can never make them say die’. Scowen mixes world weariness with naivety. He is powerless to resist his pursuit of his elusive heartthrob, simultaneously knowing it is his emotional and financial ruin while ignoring his doubts. We want to shake him by the shoulders to make him see sense. Yanexi Enriquez is wonderfully down to earth as Jenny, unscrupulously aware of her power and beauty. Flashbacks to her past lend sympathy, and Enriquez never fails to be endearing, despite everything. There are moments when we realise her helplessness, as Alex Bhat’s Mephistophelean George Perry encircles her, luring her into the trap that leads her onto the streets of Soho to eke out her scandalous living. Perry’s performance highlights the sense of class divide that preoccupies these desperate souls. Rosalind Lailey, as the barmaid Ella, is torn between pining for Bob while debating whether to accept the affections of the middle-aged, upper-class Ernest Eccles (Michael Maloney). Lailey reveals the depth her multi-layered character, conveying frustrated passion in an awkward pause. Maloney, meanwhile, transforms from the benignly eccentric to the misogynistically sinister with ruthless timing. Lucy Gray excels in various roles that include a fellow prostitute, a waitress and landlady. A mere expression, or nuanced gesture, of Gray’s contains pages of social commentary.

The sense of period and mood is captured well in the accents and phrases and dialogue; while Ellie Wintour’s set evokes the pub culture of a long-gone Soho. The bar of the Midnight Bell is lowered from the ceiling, and other props and set pieces are wheeled on and off with choreographed sleekness. Elizabeth Purnell’s sound and period music fill in the gaps while Alex Musgrave’s lighting adds the final brush strokes. At times, the staging is a living tableau, resembling a Jack Vettriano scene, complete with its sense of romance, mystery and nostalgia. What is occasionally missing is Hamilton’s subtle and intricate prose; but this is replaced by mannerisms and gazes from the performers that reveal their understanding of the piece. There is humour too, amidst the loneliness and unrequited love.

“Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky” is a wonderfully structured play, even if we are often thrown by its shifting and episodic nature. But once we are familiar with the framing, it is gorgeously fluid and dreamlike. By necessity, a condensed version of the novels, but full of their flavour.

Tag Archives: Jonathan Evans

AND I LOOKED AT THE SKY

★★★

Omnibus Theatre

AND I LOOKED AT THE SKY

Omnibus Theatre

★★★

“sparkles with wit and nostalgia and a precarious kind of longing”

AND I LOOKED AT THE SKY

Omnibus Theatre

Reviewed on 17th September 2026

by Jonathan Evans

Photography by Samuel Brooks

AND I LOOKED AT THE SKY

AND I LOOKED AT THE SKY

AND I LOOKED AT THE SKY

TWENTY THOUSAND STREETS UNDER THE SKY

★★★★

Southwark Playhouse Borough

TWENTY THOUSAND STREETS UNDER THE SKY

Southwark Playhouse Borough

★★★★

“gorgeously fluid and dreamlike”