A play about how the Ipswich community responded to the murder of five prostitutes gets its world premiere at the National Theatre on Thursday. While many Suffolk folk whose lives have been interwoven into the storyline of London Road, may be audience, the families of the murdered women most certainly will not.
After the East Anglian Daily Times published a glowing review by reporter Lynne Mortimer, Kerry Nicol, whose daughter Tania was murdered by Steve Wright, wrote to the Editor voicing her anger, describing how attempts to stop its production, including the intervention of MP Ben Gummer, failed. Can you imagine how outraged fair minded citizens would have felt if something similar had happened following the jailing of the Yorkshire Ripper?
She has my sympathies, and I am aghast at how anyone could consider creating entertainment from this terrible tragedy just over four years after the deaths of these women.
This is what Kerry Nicol wrote:
To any reader (including Lynne) who can justify the right of the play London Road to go ahead WITHOUT the victims’ families consent, and who are happy to waste money watching it.
Lynne, how can you justify watching the preview of this claptrap, then writing a recommendation for it on your entertainments page? Encouraging people to go see it and saying you hope it also gets shown in Ipswich? Where is your mentality, Lynne?
Your or a family member have obviously never been through such a trauma as us victims. If you had, you would realise it’s best not to write anything and so therefore stir up memories YET AGAIN.
London Road is bedsit land.The people who lived there over fours years ago may have moved on. Do they really want this play?
I am family members, even our MP Ben Gummer, have spoken, written to Becky Blythe and other producers involved. No result on account of our feelings, they just want to go ahead with the play and make money out of others’ misery. There’s even been an online petition to stop it.
So stop and think. It could be you in the future. Someone could be making a film, drama, play etc about your family member without your consent.
For an event so recent, it does have an odour of tastelessness.
I’m struck at how vibrant the blogs were in 2007. (Looking at your original Ipswich post.)
Regarding the play – if the relatives have expressed that they are hurt then it should be difficult to go ahead with it for reasons of conscience.
Just back from watching the play.
This wasn’t a play about the murders, and it cedrtainly wasn’t a play about the prostitutes (although it was generally very sympathetic towards them)
It was a brilliant play about how a community reacted (good and bad) to fear and tragedy and its impact on them.
Peter,
Thank you for your comment. The theme of the community reaction is clearly based around those terrible murders, and it’s still too raw for the families involved, especially to see the deaths thrust in the public spotlight as entertainment.
Presumably that’s one of the victims in the pic.
Yes, you got it.
It seems sick to me, referring to anything related to this tragedy in order to gain any kind of traction, whether it’s by shock value or whatever the intended purpose might have been.
Here’s a quick tip: don’t pass judgement on something you haven’t seen. Wouldn’t we all be furious with Alan Resnais’s film ‘Night And Fog’ because it covers the Holocaust? I can’t bear it when right-wing nutjobs kick out. I’d love to see the kind of play they’d write.
Hi Marlea, I did think about the Holocaust, Jack the Ripper and the Yorkshire Ripper too. I’m sure that London Road has been done sensitively, but my opinion is that it is too soon after the event, and that families of the murdered girls find their grief is still too raw to see their story made into a basis of a play this way for public entertainment. Why weren’t the families consulted for their views? Shouldn’t their feelings be considered?