Horror & Hilarity in The Walworth Farce
Prepare for a challenging night out at the theatre when you book The Walworth Farce.
First challenge is finding the venue: Southwark Playhouse Elephant. It’s so new that even the residents and a car full of police officers were clueless.
This brand new space tucked away in Dante Place among high rise flats is certainly not West End. It’s far edgier, all shiny glass-fronted, inside-out pipework and seating for around 300 that can transform to an in-the-round format.
Second challenge: walking the tightrope between horror and hilarity as this play-within-a-play by renowned Enda Walsh unravels, unnerves and explodes in murder and mayhem.
The action takes place in a grotty council flat on the Walworth Road – a stone’s throw from the theatre – where brothers Sean and Blake are holed up with their deranged dad Dinny since they fled their native Cork. Every day is the same, stultifying and claustrophobic, endlessly reciting the lines of Dinny’s play, taking many parts, swapping wigs and female outfits. No Oscars here, but the promise of a tarnished silver trophy for best actor.
The menace builds with the realisation that this is their prison, with only Sean let out of the Fort Knox front door to buy daily rations of oven ready chicken, six cans of Harp, fifteen crackers with spreadable cheese and pink wafer biscuits. He is Tesco’s most regular as clockwork shopper _ until check-out girl Hayley suggests a trip to Brighton beach.
He enrages Dinny by mistakenly bringing home the wrong shopping bag. Violence ensues, escalating to boiling point when sweet Hayley visits.
First performed in Galway, Cork and Dublin in 2006 The Walworth Farce was revived at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh in 2007 at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, where it won a Fringe First award. The play received its London premiere at the National Theatre in September 2008.
It wears its age lightly. Themes of migration, dislocation, isolation and family tensions are as relevant today.
Walsh mines these rich seams with a touch of Pinteresque menace and savagery.
His play is the first major production to be staged at Southwark Playhouse’s new venue at Elephant and Castle, whose patron is Sir Michael Caine, born just three miles away in Rotherhithe.
The Playhouse is only five tube train stations from the heart of West End theatre-land. Its ticket prices happily reflect the distance.
Be brave, explore and take an exhilarating ride.
- The Walworth Farce at Southwark Playhouse Elephant plays until 18 March. On Tuesday 28 February there will be a post-show Q&A with members of the company, free with a ticket for that evening’s performance.
- Accessible Performances BSL Performance: Thursday 2 March 2023 at 7.45pm.
- Captioned Performance: Friday 10 March 2023 at 7.45pm
- Audio Described Performance: Saturday 11 March 2023 at 2.30pm
