Casting has been announced for Southern Belles, which uniting two ground-breaking one-act plays by Tennessee Williams, will headline the King’s Head Theatre’s 2019 Queer Season, running from 24 July to 24 August. Southern Belles is directed by Jamie Armitage, co-director of the multi Olivier nominated musical Six.
And Tell Sad Stories of the Deaths of Queens was never performed in Williams’s lifetime, owing to its openly gay characters. Williams wrote the play in 1957, after his Broadway successes with Streetcar Named Desire and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. It charts the heart-breaking encounter between an extraordinary queen and a troubled sailor in 1950’s New Orleans and explores the boundaries of love, passion and heartbreak.
And Tell Sad Stories of the Deaths of Queens will star Luke Mullins as Candy Delaney, George Fletcher as Karl and Michael Burrows as Alvin Krenning.
Something Unspoken was written in 1958 and debuted as part of a double bill with Suddenly, Last Summer. In Something Unspoken, tensions between a wealthy Southern spinster, Miss Cornelia Scott, and Grace, her loyal secretary of 15 years, boil over in a confrontation that exposes their complex, unacknowledged and romantic yearning for each other.
Something Unspoken will star Annabel Leventon as Cornelia Scott and Fiona Marr as Grace Lancaster.
And Tell Sad Stories of the Deaths of Queens and Something Unspoken will be presented together for the very first time. Poignant, unexpected and shimmeringly beautiful, Southern Belles are startling tales of love, loneliness and longing, which cast a light on the lives of those forced to hide their true feelings from society.
Southern Belles is at The King’s Head Theatre 24 July – 24 August 2019.
