Southern Belles – King’s Head Theatre, London

Writer: Tennessee Williams

Director: Jamie Armitage

Reviewer: David Guest

As if sitting in a small pub theatre on a hot summer evening wasn’t enough, the temperature soars in the southern heat and passion of a Tennessee Williams double bill staged as part of the King’s Head Theatre Queer Season.

The two one-act plays haven’t been performed together before and one is rarely seen, having never been staged during the lifetime of the playwright owing to its subject matter. The combination of Something Unspoken andAnd Tell Sad Stories of the Deaths of Queens makes for a simply sizzling evening under the title Southern Belles.

Both plays have the heartbreak of loneliness at their core yet, despite the sadness and tragedy Williams injects with such devastating understanding common to both, there is also a real sense of the possibility of hope buried in this strong production. Yet we are never allowed to forget the desolating effect of people struggling with feelings that have to be hidden from society.

Director Jamie Armitage cleverly discovers every aspect of the isolation and feelings of worthlessness and how the objects of affection can sometimes prove to be a cruel disappointment. He finds humour in the heartache during an evening that sends the audience out gasping for breath.

First up is Something Unspoken, originally written in 1958 and performed then alongside another one-act play Suddenly, Last Summer. The central character in this vignette is a wealthy Southern states spinster, Cornelia Scott, eager to win approval in social as well as personal life.

Played effortlessly by a blistering Annabel Leventon, this is a grande dame Southern belle who has her sights fixed on becoming regent of the local chapter of the Daughters of the Confederacyin Louisiana, having held every other office in the organisation, but only on her own terms as campaigning is beneath her dignity. Such is her fear of rejection that she cannot even bring herself to attend the elections evening, relying on a friend at the end of a telephone (an odd use of a modern hand-held microphone in an otherwise beautifully designed flowing white satin 1940s set by Sarah Mercadé) to keep her informed.

That fear of rejection is also at the centre of the relationship she has with her secretary and companion of 15 years, Grace, a beautifully nuanced performance by Fiona Marr, refusing to acknowledge an emotion never overtly proclaimed though more than hinted at in their co-dependent association. Leventon captures both the strength and vulnerability of this complex creation, trying to break down the tension of things left unsaid.

It is undeniably the slighter of the two pieces, but both performers grasp the importance of playing roles which are as much about what is unwritten as the speeches delivered.

Far more substantial is the second play, And Tell Sad Stories of the Deaths of Queens, which plucks the heartstrings not least because of an incredible and unmissable award-worthy central performance. First seen a year ago at the venue, this emotional heavyweight of a play is now superbly matched with Something Unspokento create an evening of passion and emotional tension.

Luke Mullins perfectly and delicately inhabits the part of Candy, the transvestite interior decorator whose desire for love leads to living dangerously on the streets and in the bars of 1950s New Orleans. Unusually the object of his affection on this particular evening is the tough, straight and unyielding merchant seaman Karl (George Fletcher, a dark, brutal and brooding presence) who has more materialistic ideas on his mind than to be seduced.

In the performances there is more than a hint of the characters of Blanche and Stanley in A Streetcar Named Desire, an uncompromising relationship in a drama that had no difficulty being staged in the author’s lifetime.

Mullins is a sensation as the tortured, tender Southern belle left lost and lonely when his ‘husband’ runs off with “another woman.” He captures the character’s fragility, a flawed, vulnerable and sensitive eccentric who is, like the play itself, ahead of her time but who cannot face the downward spiral into loveless middle age.

Property owner Candy rents out the upstairs “slave quarters” of her home to Alvin and Jerry (sweetly played by Michael Burrows and Ben Chinapen ), two younger gay boys who increasingly frustrate Candy and stir up her growing self-loathing, but also offer sanctuary and support when needed most. Armitage has the boys sitting on stage throughout the play: are they merely observers of a tragic situation or are they the only means of salvation in a hostile society?

It’s sometimes hard to believe that Williams, who penned such enormous works of epic dramatic intensity as The Glass Menagerie, A Streetcar Named Desire, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Sweet Bird of Youthand The Night of the Iguana, could also have written such punchy shorter works, which are too often overlooked yet are well-deserving of exploration and examination.

At the King’s Head this Queer Season opener proves the value of two such titles in a crackling evening of stimulating drama.

Runs until August 24 2019 | Image: Scott Rylander