A gripping couple of hours in the shadow of the Yorkshire Ripper
There Are No Beginnings
Leeds Playhouse ★★★★★
Is regional theatre in peril? Last year, Richard Eyre urged for more funds to be pumped into this crucial part of the theatre industry. A few months ago, David Greig – artistic director of the Lyceum, Edinburgh – told me the sector was on a knife-edge.
Take a step back, though and, despite the evident cause for concern, there are remarkable grounds for celebration. In artistic terms, the decade is ending on a high. Whether it’s at Bristol, Chichester, Northampton, Nottingham, Manchester or Sheffield, exceptional work is being routinely done: Bristol Old Vic’s
Touching the Void transfers to the West End next month; Sheffield Crucible’s
The Life of Pi will do so next year. But there’s also an abundance of shows that warrant a trip to see them in situ.
What was once the West Yorkshire Playhouse – and got rebranded Leeds Playhouse last year – has now just fully reopened following a £15.8million capital redevelopment, enabling it to join the regional premier league after a decade of fitful achievement.
The name change says a lot – it often felt as though the identity of the WYP was too blurredly regional; and the ambitious rejig brings home who the place is for. Where the main entrance once faced vexingly away from town, and was an uphill struggle to reach, now a glass-fronted extension at street level greets a revitalised part of the city, inviting passers-by to step inside.
A lighting installation proclaims, “I get knocked down but I get up again” along the revamped exterior. Regional theatres need a spirit of defiance, and this gets added heft in the reborn Playhouse’s first in-house production, which inaugurates a new brick-walled studio space and which, in rewinding to a dark chapter in Leeds’s history, captures a fierce spirit of fightback.
“This is not a story about the Yorkshire Ripper,” Charley Miles (from rural North Yorkshire) says in her author’s note to There Are No Beginnings. Across a quietly gripping two hours, we hear jolting samples of reports conveying the killing spree of Peter Sutcliffe between 1975 and 1981. Yet in contrast to the equally superb The Incident Room, seen at the Fringe this year, which dwelt on the machismo-spurred failings of the investigation, the focus is on a handful of Leeds women during that time and their character-forming experiences.
“Don’t draw attention to yourselves,” intones Fiona, an impassive, determined police officer (Jesse Jones), after the fifth murder – “an innocent, 16-year-old shop assistant”.
That word “innocent” is loaded with period assumptions: that those victims who were soliciting were a lesser sort, that women and girls needed not to attract attention to themselves – and alter their clothing accordingly. The crushing atmosphere of restraint, fear and suspicion – and counterblast of dawning feminist ire – is beautifully caught in Amy Leach’s production, performed on a raised, tiled platform, costume changes done in plain sight, with the audience sitting on either side.
We encounter Natalie Gavin’s Helen (a wayward teenager who takes risks on the streets); June (played with a wonderful clenched commitment by Julie Hesmondhalgh), who helps girls like Helen; and June’s daughter, Sharon (Tessa Parr), who comes to admire this interloper, and more so, as she explores her shifting sexuality. Among many touching moments, the girls’ bopping to an LP of Supertramp’s Dreamer conjures all the hope that the Ripper’s insanity blighted, and yet something indomitable, female and joyous too.