By Neil Durham

WORTH A LOOK? ***1/2

WHEN? Saturday 11 October (matinee), runs through 11 October 2025 RUNTIME: 90 minutes (without interval)

Bennett is arguably best known for her Olivier and Tony nominations as Judy Garland in End Of The Rainbow and here plays bisexual actress Tallulah Bankhead on the night she discovers to her surprise that she’s not being cast in the film of Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie.

• Read on for reasons including whether this delightfully cast treat deserves a West End transfer

Playwright Michael McKeever puts Bennett’s outrageous, deep-throated and scorned Bankhead in the 50s Hollywood home of John Partridge’s (Taboo, The 20th Anniversary Charity Concert) Billy Haines, a 1-time movie star turned celebrity interior designer who refused the studios’ insistance on the titular ‘Code’, which would see him give up his male lover to marry a woman.

Haines is also entertaining agent Henry Willson who brings with him client and budding star Chad Manford, played by the youthful and naive Solomon Davy, and we learn both men are closeted and Nick Blakeley’s vampiric talentspotter has opposing views to Haines’.

The Code then revels in gossip about those working in the Hollywood movie studios around the world wars particularly classic Gone With The Wind as well as the secret proclivities of its seemingly straight male stars.

Bennett draws on the success of some of her best loved roles including an Olivier nomination for Follies at the National Theatre and revels in the fact that she’s outrageous, becoming progressively drunker as the afternoon goes on and is fabulously still here.

Partridge has more to do and brings a real charisma and thoughtfulness to the role of a man who has settled down with his true love, is contemplating what Bankhead views as a radical move to cement it while Willson demands a favour from him to separate his client from his beau.

There is a lot of talking in The Code and much that an audience thrilling to the excess of 50s Hollywood glamour will find fun in revelling in as well as the threat to homosexuality which persists today.

We catch this production at its penultimate show and wonder whether it has the legs to earn a West End transfer across the nearby Thames?

Bennett and Partridge certainly have the star power to bring it to the West End and we can definitely see the opportunity to crack The Code enlivening West End audiences soon.

• Main pictures by The Code courtesy Southwark Playhouse Tickets
• Have you seen a Southwark Playhouse show before and what did you think of this production? Let us know what you thought in the comments below
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