Theatre review: Southern Belles

London’s unofficial Tennessee Williams season continues, and if Orpheus Descending and The Night of the Iguana are comparatively infrequently produced then the two one-act plays paired up by the King’s Head as Southern Belles are outright obscurities. Both deal with queer stories with varying levels of directness, and correspondingly varying levels of success. In Something Unspoken, Southern Grand Dame Cornelia (Annabel Leventon) is at home sitting by the phone, pointedly avoiding a meeting of the local chapter of the Daughters of the Confederacy at which a vote is being held. Her hope is that she’s so well-respected within the society that she’ll finally be elected to the highest position of Regent unopposed: But she’s so nervous that things might not work out that way that she’s feigning illness and staying at home; and her fears are well-founded, as her mole keeps calling from the election with unpromising updates.

Feeling vulnerable, Cornelia turns to her secretary Grace (Fiona Marr.) She’s bought her roses to celebrate the 15th anniversary of her coming to work and live with her, and feels this might finally be the time to confess she has something more than employer/employee feelings towards her.

After a short interval And Tell Sad Stories of the Deaths of Queens puts a more overtly queer and more overtly destructive relationship on stage, as Candy (Luke Mullins,) a gay interior designer, property owner and (behind closed doors only) transvestite, brings back “straight” sailor Karl (George Fletcher) to his flat in New Orleans’ French quarter. What at first seems like the seduction of a closeted man turns darker as it starts to look not only like Karl might turn violent, but also like that might be exactly why Candy brought him home.

Jamie Armitage’s production deals with the small budget of a pub theatre by going for a vague, non-literal staging (Sarah Mercadé's design is all pink curtains, flowing kimonos and bare feet) that’s not quite avant-garde enough for the gimmick of all phone conversations being spoken into a non-functioning, handheld microphone not to awkwardly stand out. In any case the minimalist style works better for the second play in the pairing: Something Unspoken is almost a comedy of manners in which the haughty Cornelia delivers withering put-downs while being taken down a peg or two herself, but with a tragic undertow as she almost offhandedly broaches the subject of her greatest desire and is rebuffed. Leventon delivers both the comedy and the tragedy of the character but foregrounding her relationship with Grace feels like it misses some subtlety in the play’s sadness.

It’s much easier to imagine Mercadé's set as Candy’s apartment, whose décor is aiming for Japanese chic but has landed on “chop suey house” instead. Set in 1955, New Orleans has developed a defiant queer subculture into which Candy has all but isolated himself, but the outside world’s judgement is always felt; Candy has taken the homophobia of the world at large and internalised it. With the additional blow of having been dumped for a younger model by the only partner he’s ever had, he seeks to replace him in a self-destructive way, actively inviting Karl to exploit him if not worse. It’s a sometimes desperately sad indictment of the insidious way being hated can become part of your DNA, and an always-relevant reminder, especially when LGBTQ+ education is once again under attack, of the real cost of allowing people to be “othered.”

Southern Belles: Something Unspoken and And Tell Sad Stories of the Deaths of Queens by Tennessee Williams is booking until the 24th of August at the King’s Head Theatre.

Running time: 1 hour 35 minutes including interval.

Photo credit: Scott Rylander.