Share a drink with a group of shameless lowlifes and watch their lives implode…

Tramp’s innovative, semi-immersive production reimagines Tennessee Williams’ little known play, Confessional, 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 increases 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. It’s like an episode of EastEnders, written by Tennessee Williams!

Directed by Jack Silver, Confessional, Williams’ first play to feature an openly gay character, will gets its London professional premiere in a 4-week season at Southwark Playhouse from Wednesday 5 October to Saturday 29 October.

Confessional transfers to London following a critically-acclaimed run at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2015.

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.”

Lizzie Stanton reprises her critically-acclaimed role as Leona, and the cast features 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.

Creative team:
Director Jack Silver
Set Designer Justin Williams
Produced by Remy Blumenfeld

Tennessee Williams

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).

LISTINGS INFO

Tramp presents

Confessional
by Tennessee Williams

Southwark Playhouse
The Little
77-85 Newington Causeway
London SE1 6BD
Box Office: 020 7407 0234
ww.southwarkplayhouse.co.uk

Wednesday 5 October-
Saturday 29 October

Press night:
Friday 7 October at 8.00pm

Times:
Monday – Saturday at 8.00pm
Tuesday & Saturday matinee at 3.30pm

Ticket prices:
Previews on 5 & 6 October: all tickets £12
From 7 October: £20, £16 (conc)

Concessions
Students, Under 16s, Unwaged, Registered
disabled, Over 65s.
Registered disabled patrons can bring one
companion free of charge.