Cottesloe, London
Here's a novel idea for David Cameron's big society: nothing forges community spirit quite like a serial killer in one's midst.
Verbatim dramatist Alecky Blythe has previous on this subject: her breakout play, Come Out Eli, depicted the effect on local people of the Hackney siege of Christmas 2003.
Now she turns to the killings of five sex workers in Ipswich in 2006/7, as experienced ? at one remove ? by the murderer Stephen Wright's neighbours.
The play's journalistic format ? it meticulously recreates the actual speech of residents interviewed by Blythe ? yields abundant pleasures, even if its portrait of cheerful neighbourliness built in the shadow of violent death is an unsettling one.
What strikes you first is the incongruous clash of colloquial speech and choral singing: Blythe's verbatim script has been set to music by Adam Cork.
These aren't orthodox song lyrics; these are demotic utterances, set to music with every "um", malapropism and repetition intact.
"Begonias, petunias, um, impatiens and things," runs the first number, a celebration of London Road in Bloom.
"Everyone is very very nervous and very uncertain of everything, basically," is the catchy refrain from a later song, as the killer remains at large.
The effect can be highly comical, even if ? because these are real people ? one doesn't always feel comfortable laughing. And there are moments when the inarticulacy gets frustrating. It's left to Cork's songs to do the dramatic spadework, mining the impersonal interviews for emotional substance.
Sometimes that is effective, as when neighbours sing of their horror that the killings may have taken place next door. But even Cork's music can't make a TV reporter's faulty technology exciting, nor the results of the local flower show. At such times, we're reminded that the conventionally dramatic parts of this story are happening offstage.
There are sacrifices to be made, then, in staging a musical that's all chorus and no leading roles.
But Blythe's treatment, in Rufus Norris's beautifully performed production, does reveal to us types of lived experience that drama often avoids: the passers-by inconvenienced by major crimes, the locals thrilled to star in a national news event, and the community surprised to discover that "we're reaping the benefits of what happened," as one resident remarks.
Few thoughts are spared for prostitutes living or dead, as public spirit blooms in the wake of Wright's crimes. It's a happy ending for London Road ? but with troubling implications for the rest of us.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2011/apr/15/london-road-review-cottesloe
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