Confessional is an unexpectedly dull title for a play by Tennessee Williams, who has so often come up with some of the most original and poetic titles, viz. A Streetcar Named Desire, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Sweet Bird of Youth, The Night of the Iguana, The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore.
Williams’ one-act Confessional (1970) is an earlier version of his Small Craft Warnings (1972). Eight sad and lonely characters in a Pacific Coast bar in the 1950s address the audience directly in a series of monologues. The characters are life’s flotsam and jetsam and things get pert rowdy and tearful.
Jack Silver’s semi-immersive production transfers the action to a present day pub in Southend. What we hear doesn’t sound like Tennessee Williams when the dialogue is spoken with English accents.
The Southwark Playhouse studio has been converted into a seedy pub. Actors and audience share the same space. The setup and lack of focus can be very distracting; and it certainly doesn’t make this bitty play any more coherent and real. The actors evidently act it differently every night, as the mood takes them. Lizzie Stanton was very abrasive and very volatile on the night I went.