A lakeside warehouse in Thailand's deep south is an unlikely place to set a drama about stalled lives, but that's exactly where Karma Theatre & Film Studio has placed its new play, Songkhla. Written by Radtai Lokutarapol and Natthakorn Julrasorn, it's a local reworking of American playwright Samuel D. Hunter's Clarkston, which originally followed two young men working at a Costco in Washington State. Where Hunter examined the post-2008 squeeze on the American middle class, the Thai version moves the economic anxiety to a stagnant southern province still feeling the after-effects of the pandemic.

The story follows two men in their mid-twenties on night shift at a depot. Rang, played by Thitinan Rattanathitinan, is a local English graduate from Prince of Songkhla University, chained to a job repaying student loans, writing short stories in his spare time and dreaming of a scholarship to the University of Iowa. His plans keep colliding with his drug-addicted mother, played by Pijika Jittaputta, who steals his money and laptop but keeps drawing him back in. Then there's James, played by Natouch Siripongthon, a wealthy, openly gay Thammasat graduate from Bangkok who has been diagnosed with a neurodegenerative disease expected to kill him by 30. After his body fails on the road south, he drifts into Songkhla, takes a depot job and starts a relationship with Rang.

The reviewer draws a comparison to Waiting For Godot — two people keeping each other company at the edge of things — but with more warmth. The critic highlights Pijika's comic timing and Natouch's willingness to play James as loud, unapologetic and sissy, breaking away from the formulaic roles he's known for in BL series. Thitinan's Rang is quieter, more guarded, and the review suggests his intimate scenes land less convincingly than his exasperated ones.

For travellers, the hook is practical: the play will restage at the Bangkok Theatre Festival 2026, running 7.30-9pm on November 14 and 15 at T.Nam Charoen Playhouse, with tickets booked through the festival's online site. If you're in Bangkok in November and want a night of contemporary Thai theatre rather than the usual tourist programme, this is a concrete option — and a window into how Thai theatre makers adapt Western work to local realities, a scene that has grown steadily livelier in recent years.

It's also a reminder that Songkhla itself, the southern city the play is named for, sits well off the usual Thailand circuit — a historic port town on the Gulf of Thailand with a Chinese-Thai-Malay heritage that tourism campaigns are only starting to push. The play may be about being stuck between somewhere and anywhere, but the city it borrows its name from is worth a look for travellers who like their destinations pre-tourist trail.