London Road
Abomination street...
The vogue for ‘verbatim theatre’, where interviews or testimonies form the basis of the text, reached a zenith in London Road, a verbatim musical first staged at the National Theatre in 2011. Five-star reviews greeted Alecky Blythe’s orchestrated accounts of residents of the Ipswich street where the murderer of five sex workers lived. Actors took multiple parts, their Greek chorus of doubts, accusations and the aftermath making unusual yet enthralling theatre, as memorable for its sparse staging as its decidedly unlyrical subject matter.
Yet for every Les Mis movie there’s a Jersey Boys or Rock Of Ages. Having directed the stage version, Rufus Norris is in a better position than most to ease the transition of London Road but he has far less traditional material to work with. Blythe and composer Adam Cork’s songs are built around quirks of speech rather than poetry, with “um” more likely to feature than “love” and repetition often taking the place of melody.
If you’ve seen Clio Barnard’s debut The Arbor, you’ll recognise the format of actors precisely re-enacting real people but the execution is still likely to surprise as anoraks, chintz, gasworks and normality form a backdrop to unimaginable evil. Outside the accepted artificiality of a theatre space, however, it’s a far bigger ask of an audience; Norris has opted for veracity over fantasy, making the aria-ing news anchors all the more extraordinary in the real world.
In trimming the running time a chunk of the first act has been sacrificed, including the first rendition of ‘London Road In Bloom’ (reprised at the finale); without it early on, there’s a trudge to the pacing. It’s been repositioned to force a more upbeat arc, as residents (including Olivia Colman) reclaim their street while one of the working girls (Kate Fleetwood) experiences a brief moment of belonging, but it dulls the edge of this iteration. The charm of the choruses is lost in translation, the horror of the crimes a barely there backstory.
THE VERDICT Tom Hardy’s incongruous appearance as a psycho-obsessed taxi driver is worth a watch but whether it works for you depends on a willingness to indulge the oddness.
› Certificate 15 Director Rufus Norris Starring Olivia Colman, Kate Fleetwood, Michael Shaeffer, Anita Dobson, Tom Hardy Screenplay Alecky Blythe Distributor Picturehouse Entertainment Running time 92 mins