Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky to be adapted for the stage

Troupe has announced the world premiere of a new stage adaptation of Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky by Patrick Hamilton, adapted by Simon Reade and directed by Matthew Iliffe.

The play is based on Hamilton’s trilogy of novels set in London in the late 1920s and follows three characters whose lives intersect around the Midnight Bell pub. Barman Bob hopes to become a writer, while barmaid Ella is in love with him. Bob becomes preoccupied with Jenny Maple, a sex worker, and spends his savings trying to help her.

The production will run at Southwark Playhouse Borough from 10 September to 17 October 2026, with a press night on 16 September. Casting is to be announced.

Reade said today: “Hamilton declares ‘I’ll show you life with a capital L’ in this semi-autobiographical story of ‘the small fish in the weird teeming aquarium of the metropolis.’ It’s a dark celebration of a seedy, smoggy, smutty London where heart-breaking, heart-broken people just strive to survive and attempt to have fun in those 20,000 streets from the Euston Road to Soho, the West End to Hammersmith. What an amazing thing to stage this story now, for the very first time.”

Hamilton’s works include the plays Gaslight and Rope, both of which were adapted for film, and novels including Hangover Square and The Slaves of Solitude. Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky was previously adapted for television by BBC Four in 2005, in a version starring Sally Hawkins.