Step into London, 1929. Behind the stained glass and sticky counter of the Midnight Bell pub, barman Bob spends his shifts pouring pints, keeping the peace, and secretly nurturing dreams of a literary life. But when his quiet routine is shattered by an obsession with the alluring Jenny Maple, Bob's carefully saved earnings—and his future—begin to vanish into the grimy fog of Jazz Age London.
Patrick Hamilton’s masterpiece Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky has long stood as a devastating, darkly witty portrait of metropolitan loneliness and unrequited longing. Now, the classic novel by the author of Gaslight and Rope comes to life on stage in a sharp new adaptation by Simon Reade at Southwark Playhouse, directed by Off West End Award winner Matthew Iliffe.
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| Jordan Scowen. |
At the heart of this sprawling, stylish production is Jordan Scowen, who takes on the compelling role of Bob—a hopelessly romantic dreamer navigating the tragicomedy of heartbreak, obsession, and the search for human connection in a city that doesn't care. We caught up with Jordan ahead of the run.
Bob is a man caught between two very different worlds - his reality as a barman at the Midnight Bell and his dreams of becoming a writer. How do you tap into that specific kind of 1920s ambition, and how does his writing dream manifest in how he carries himself?
Hope plays a huge part in all of the characters’ lives in our play and Bob is no exception. An eternal dreamer, he’s led by his heart in terms of his wishes and desires. His ambition of being a writer is one that he keeps close to his chest but also one that bleeds into the other parts of his life. As a barman, he analyses his customers in different ways, almost seeing them as potential characters for him to one day use, and with Jenny he allows his heart to dream and gets swept up as if he were living in one of his stories. Tapping into the ambition of having a creative dream while working a job that feels like a temporary stopgap unfortunately isn’t too much of a stretch for most actors! The fact that our play is set in the 1920s, where options were much more limited for anyone caught in their circumstances, only adds to the heartbreak.
Bob’s obsession with Jenny drives him to spend his entire life savings trying to “rescue” her. From an actor’s perspective, do you view Bob’s actions as purely romantic, deeply delusional, or perhaps a mix of both? How do you keep him sympathetic to the audience as he makes these destructive choices?
One of the jobs of an actor is to not judge the character they’re trying to bring to life but instead try to work out their justification for doing what they do. What is it in Bob’s life that has led him to a point where he would spend his life’s savings, that he’s worked so hard to build, on a woman he barely knows but falls head over heels in love with? Like all good storytelling, it won’t be just one thing but a mixture. What Patrick Hamilton’s source material and Simon Reade’s adaptation do so wonderfully for all of the characters is to let them live in moments of ambiguity that will hopefully have the audience question throughout what the character will do next and what they too would do in those situations.
While Bob is looking at Jenny, Ella is looking at Bob. What is it like navigating that tragic triangle of unrequited love and missed connections night after night on stage?
There is a love triangle of sorts in the story and, while we haven’t yet explored all of those relationships deeply enough after the first week of rehearsals, what’s already clear is that there are many different types of love at work in the play. They’re three young people who maybe themselves don’t know what love is yet, and in a city that can feel incredibly lonely, they’re all striving in some way to feel wanted.
Bob represents a specific type of young man in the interwar period - struggling for economic stability while chasing a romanticised ideal. How do you think the social pressures of 1929 London shape his desperation and his need to play the “rescuer” for Jenny?
Bob is in many ways a traditional man of the time. He’s too young to have fought in World War I, but his whole life has been impacted by it. No more so than the economic position the country finds itself in now. He’s a hard worker and has managed to save a comfortable sum of money. This allows him to indulge in his love, lust, infatuation (however you see it) with Jenny. He thinks she needs saving and is happy to bankrupt himself in doing so, but maybe she doesn’t. Maybe he needs saving from himself. The pressures of the time, though, have been engineered in a way that Bob feels, as a man, he needs to ‘rescue’ a woman rather than be helped himself.
There is a deep loneliness at the core of all three main characters. How do you play a character who is fundamentally lonely without making him closed off to the audience? How does Bob mask his isolation when he’s working behind the bar?
Loneliness is another key driving force for all of the characters in the play; I think the fact that our story takes place and is being performed in a large city, in this case London, will allow the audience to relate even more to the characters. I don’t think the characters are closed off; they’re all seeking to end their loneliness, and so that in itself makes them more interesting to watch as we’re seeing them actively try to do something. What will hopefully help to make our production special, though, is being set in the round; there will be moments where different parts of the audience will see the characters’ longing, anguish, and joy that they might not otherwise see in a traditional theatre layout.
This is the World Premiere of this specific stage adaptation. How much have you looked at the original 1929 novel or the 2005 BBC TV adaptation for inspiration, or did you prefer to start entirely fresh with the script?
I haven’t looked at the BBC adaptation; I’m sure I will once we’ve finished! Simon has worked closely from the source material and so we’ve all gone back to Hamilton’s original work, but ultimately what we’re staging is Simon Reade’s adaptation and so for me what worked best was to start from his new script. The original novel has been a great research resource to be able to go between with the script. The three novels the play is based on come in at over 700 pages and we have a running time of about 2 hours, so there are elements that have been lost or condensed but as with Simon’s other adaptations, he’s done a fantastic job of distilling the essential beats of the story and creating something rich and full.
The play is a love letter to 1929 Jazz Age London. What kind of research or preparation did you do to get into the mindset of a working-class Londoner during the late 1920s?
The research has been a really fun part of this project. I’ve been listening to music, watching clips from the movies of the period as they shifted from silent film to the ‘talkies’, and reading articles from the time. Also walking round the parts of London that the story is set in helps to give you a real feel of the time as somuch of the architecture still exists.
Southwark Playhouse Borough is known for its intimate, immersive atmosphere. How do you think that specific venue enhances the seedy, claustrophobic feeling of the Midnight Bell pub for the audience?
Southwark Playhouse Borough provides the perfect backdrop for us and I think, without giving away too much about the design of the play, people who have been to the venue before will be really surprised when they walk in and see what Ellie Wintour, our designer, has done. Being in the round straight away gives an intimacy to the performance that you can’t always replicate in a traditional setup. It’s a tight performance space, so you’re right there with us and I think that will add to a great atmosphere.
What would you hope an audience member takes away from seeing Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky?
I hope that the audience comes away with a sense of familiarity with the themes and tones that the story touches on even though it’s set 100 years ago. These are people living lives not too dissimilar to the oneswe’re living now and hopefully people will be able to see their own losses, loves, hopes and dreams reflected in the play.
Twenty Thousand Streets Under The Sky runs at Southwark Playhouse Borough from 10th September to 17th October 2026. For tickets and more information, visit https://southwarkplayhouse.co.uk/productions/twenty-thousand-streets/
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