London Road review, The Cottesloe

London Road is not a play. It's musical without being a musical. It is a sort-of choreography; a sound snapshot in time; like snatches of video, flashmobs on YouTube morphed to make drama. It's new, now, complex and different.

Built around the testimonies of residents living on London Road, Ipswich, home of the Suffolk strangler Steve Wright, it is literally a think piece, taking us into people's heads. Writer, Alecky Blythe, has sorted and edited hours of research creating a conversational tapestry that composer, Adam Cork, has turned into rhythms and passages of music. Through their musings, umms and all, we watch a community dealing with the darkness within: a man in a flat down the road murdering five prostitutes in the last overcast weeks of 2006.   

Neighbourhood watch

Repetition is at the heart of the effect, sixty characters played by eleven actors ruminating and cogitating over, under and around each other. At its heart, Kate Fleetwood the distracted neighbour in a gardening cardigan, introduces a flower show that lifts the road from the shadows. 

Conclusion: Whatever it isn't, London Road is utterly absorbing, a tale of everyday folk trapped in a  cat's cradle of police tape. Director, Rufus Norris creates a slow sensate burn that heats into a muted, hopeful crescendo.   

References:

New performance dates just announced

Alecky Blythe 'London Road is not Mamma Mia'

Michael Coveney in The Independent