Jack The Ripper - Left This Reviewer Unsatisfied

If this was the first time I was learning about Jack the Ripper and if the existence of serial killers wasn’t part of my social consciousness, I may have had a different experience of this play. 

But we all know the story. Whitechapel Productions’ rendition may have been historically accurate, but it was also dry and largely lifeless. There is so much potential to explore the full range of human experience in this mysterious tale and perhaps my expectations were high but all I saw was a bunch of safe choices on that stage. Even the murder scenes felt safe. Not enough fear, lust, rage, glee. . . whatever.

The show description warns of violent content. I’m not sure I saw any of that. If you choose to present material like this to a modern audience that is desensitized with video games and television you either have to get gritty and gruesome, darkly romantic, strangely stylized, or you need characters that are really, really human. The audience needs something to connect with.

That said, there were pockets of really good play here. Period pieces are very difficult, especially if you are tending towards realism and you’ve chosen a set holding multiple locations. I would have cut the set even more. If you can’t get a box set for something like this it is often better to have a street light and two black boxes than a half-arsed “partial period set”. If your acting and script are solid then we really won’t need a bale of hay to imagine that you’re in a barn, we’ll go there with you. 

And you can do a lot with light. For example the first scene with the streetlights absolutely sent a tingle up my spine, but the atmosphere didn’t hold. A brightly lit jumble of props doesn’t exactly transport me back to the late 1800s. I think if they whole piece had been done in more murky lighting it would have forgiven a lot of the show’s small short comings. This is probably a big part of why the monologues ended up being so much more effective than the scenes, they were in a spot on a dark stage.

The acting was fine, the gazillion characters weren’t all fully developed and the accents went off the rails a few times, but the ensemble did an admirable job given the circumstances. Each actor seemed to have a favourite character or two which they nailed.  Unfortunately all of the other characters just blended together. Woman walks in the dark and gets strangled can become a repetitive pattern.

Jack The Ripper may have left this reviewer wanting, but art is subjective. If you have an alternative perspective, please post your comments below.