LONDON ROAD

Overview

Hailed as a remarkable, ground-breaking work during two sell-out runs at the National Theatre, this musical is set in and around London Road in Ipswich, Suffolk, during the Ipswich serial murders and subsequent trial of killer Steve Wright in 2006–2008.

Q&A of London Road Writer Alecky Blythe and video interview with actor Anita Dobson by Georgia Elliot-Smith.

The libretto uses a verbatim style, where the spoken text is reproduced by the performers exactly as recorded in interviews, in this case conducted by writer Alecky Blythe with the residents of London Road and some of the sex workers there, as well as members of the media who gathered in the area to report the news.

The Music:

The lyrics in the musical segments, composed by Adam Cork, are similarly derived from the interviews as recorded, with the meter, pitch and rhythm of the music following the patterns of the original recorded speech as closely as possible.

The Director:

Rufus Norris has been an Associate Director at the National Theatre since 2011. His production of London Road opened at the Cottesloe in 2011, before transferring to the Olivier in 2012, winning the Critics’ Circle Award for Best Musical.

The Story:

Neither the murdered women nor their killer are depicted, nor are the murders themselves; rather, the piece is concerned with the residents as they cope with the events unfolding around them, the media attention drawn to their neighbourhood, and their attempts to rebuild and regenerate their community afterwards. The piece does not feature principal characters in the conventional sense; instead, an ensemble cast assume the roles of various locals, sex workers and reporters, and most characters are not referred to by name.