Feminist retelling, gritty mystery drama, or dark cop comedy?
A slightly confused retelling of the real Millgarth Incident Room’s search for the Yorkshire Ripper nevertheless creates a great atmosphere.
Walking into Liverpool’s Royal Court on the second night of Olivia Hirst and David Byrne’s The Incident Room’s, one steps back into the 1970s and into the centre of the police hunt for the notorious and elusive Yorkshire Ripper. Constable Andrew Laptew, played by Jordan Barkley, stands in full police uniform outside the bar and apprehends a tall young man in tartan and a flat cap who descends the stairs behind me. The rest of the cast are already on stage: stressed detectives smoking cigarettes, answering phone calls and clacking on typewriters as the audience files in. The set, a haphazard collection of cardboard boxes, photos and maps pinned to the wall, looks a little cheap but captures the disorganisation that led to heavy criticism and cries of incompetence against the real Millgarth Incident Room taskforce.
With a sudden switch to red lights, the play begins, but unfortunately the first fifteen minutes are less well executed than the build-up, with the ladies behind me, muttering about not being able to hear a word, clearer than the dialogue on stage. However, the cast found their feet as the night went on and presented a promising crew of young actors with exciting careers ahead. The narrative is closely centred around Detective Megan Winterburn, the classic bright woman in a room full of hot-headed, sexist men – though the script still feels the need to regularly point out that she doesn’t wear makeup or care about her clothes. Florence King’s portrayal breathes real life, emotion, and regret into Meg. Christina Rose and Rachel McGrath, playing journalist Tish Morgan and survivor Maureen Long, also deserve a special mention for commanding the stage throughout each of their short but noteworthy appearances.
The play tries to take a feminist spin on the search for the Yorkshire Ripper. Told through Meg’s memories, though she may not always be a reliable narrator, it exposes much of the misogyny that prevented the real killer from being caught until eleven lives had been claimed: both that the police never cared about prostitutes, and that nobody listens to the one character with a brain. Unfortunately, The Incident Room can’t quite decide what it wants to be. Is it a feminist retelling, or a gritty mystery drama, or a dark cop comedy? Every couple of minutes the men burst into shouting matches or physical fights, and spend a lot of time getting within millimetres of each other’s faces, but then the drama alternates with laboured jokes. Tense moments are flagged up with heavy use of slow motion, freeze framing and sudden dramatic music, which I find reduces the effect.
One-room plays (which The Incident Room is, if you exclude one somewhat out of place scene featuring ABBA in a nightclub) spanning the events of five years in a couple of hours are difficult to execute elegantly, but with a promising cast, the play would do better to trust them to create tension and drama, and decide on one angle through which to frame the story.
I would like to note, however, that Old Fruit Jar Productions are fundraising for SAMM National through this play – a charity which supports those bereaved by murder and manslaughter, and that the play does do justice to the real women claimed by the Yorkshire Ripper, leaving the audience with the request to think of them as more than just victims.
OFJ Productions was founded only four years ago, and despite a slightly confused play, these fresh faces still leave plenty of hope.
REVIEWER: Juliet Pone