Uplifting tale of community uniting after murders - on the Bognor stage

It’s a challenging show – and one which sounds grim, but in reality it is anything but. Playing at the Regis Centre in Bognor from Thursday to Saturday, March 9 to 11, London Road offers a powerful and uplifting tale of a community rebuilding itself after a serial killer strikes.

A critical sensation when it opened at The National Theatre in 2011, the show won Best Musical at the 2011 Critics Circle Theatre Awards and became a celebrated feature film in 2015 with the original cast reprising their stage roles, including Olivia Coleman. Inspired by true events, Alecky Blythe and Adam Cork’s musical narrates the lives of a Suffolk community rebuilding its reputation after a series of murders targeting prostitutes.

Senior lecturer Paul Ackerley underlines the challenges it offers: “The musical is based on interviews with the residents of London Road, Ipswich and so the score is set to their speech patterns right down to the ums and errs. It received five-star reviews across the board when it opened at the National Theatre in 2011. There have only been six productions since. We are the seventh and now feature on the Wikipedia page as part of its development.

“The residents were interviewed by the writers because they were neighbours of the serial killer of five prostitutes, who was finally caught in 2006. The media intrusion was horrific. The musical is about the way the neighbourhood recovered its community spirit and dignity.

It’s powerful but also uplifting. We chose it for the 15-years celebration to showcase the talents of the triple threat students as this is the most musically complex piece we have ever done. It’s also one of the most important pieces of theatre the UK has ever produced. It’s unusual material for the Bognor and Chichester audiences, but we hope they will want to come and admire the achievements of the super-talented cast.”

Among the cast are Harriet Spence-Reid, Susanna McEwen and Lorna Monaghan: as Paul says, a proper international cast: Harriet is from Singapore, Susanna from Scotland and Lorna from Germany.

As Harriet says: “It follows a rather dark topic, the story of the 2006 serial killer who killed five prostitutes but the story itself is actually really uplifting. It follows is the community of the road and the way they come together, building a community that was not really there before. We don't follow the killer. We don't follow the actual situation. It's the perspective of the residents who come together after this horrible thing.”

Lorna agrees: “The focus is on humanity, these ordinary people and how they live their lives.”

The fact that it is a verbatim piece is all part of the fun and the challenge, as Susanna says: “I've never really done anything like this before. It's so complex. You've got all the ums and ahs and you've got the laughter and you've got the breathing written into it as well, every single pause, every single inflection. We have to replicate what they said and how they said it.”