London Road

This is a revival of the 2011 play about the impact of a series of real life murders by a serial killer in Ipswich during 2006-7.  The play opens with a 'Community in Bloom' competition in London Road including a visit from the mayor. During the first half of the play the narrative focuses on the nervousness and suspicion in the road in the wake of five murders of women working as prostitutes in the London Road area and the arrest of a neighbour also living on the road.  I found this part quite frustrating as the voices were mainly of the residents, who are scared, suspicious of each other, but also pleased that the police are now taking an interest and that there is no longer prostitution in the area.  There's a glaring silence where the voices of the women are missing during that first half.

In the second half though, along with an excruciatingly long silence to focus on the women victims (the play just stops) we then get some voices of the women, or at least those who had previously been working in the area.   We also hear from the reporters, but also shockingly, from people who thought the women deserved it and were glad that the murders happened. 

The play is almost completely sung through, and the words and lyrics are all verbatim which  adds a strange but effective rhythm to the songs with ‘ums and ‘ahs’ and phrases being repeated.  I’m not a great fan of sung through speech, but it was effective, particularly with phrases being repeated in place of any big melodic choruses.  And I thought it was clever that at the start there was a fair amount of discordance and overlapping speech, but when we got to the end, as the opening song was reprised, there were harmonies, the community having come together through the experience. 

The play opens with the recorded real voices of the community and fittingly closes (almost) with the real voices of some of the working women affected.  For the residents of London Road the death of the five women ended up bringing good things as well as bad, and the community benefitted in the end.  That's quite a jarring thought.