Review | The Unfortunate at The Spring, Havant

Grounded firmly in writer/director Ben Tanner’s fascination with the 1888 Autumn of Terror in Whitechapel, the play contrives a love-story against the background of those events.

Of the five women generally accepted as Jack the Ripper’s victims, only one appears in the play – Mary Jane Kelly - his last and most ferocious, his curtain-call to the world.

The others suffer their undignified deaths sometimes almost as an aside; I’m not sure victims three and four were actually named until the end of the piece. This is not a criticism. In light of the story Tanner wants to tell, it works nicely.

The central characters are another prostitute, Isabel Prater, and a journalist who makes it his mission to rescue her, Christian Lane.

As these two, Leila Morello and James Andrews impress mightily. Both underplay the stylised Victorian dialogue which others in the cast struggle with. There is nothing surprising about the development and conclusion of their relationship, but that doesn’t diminish its effectiveness.

These two performances are worth your ticket-money alone.

Vin Adams, as newspaper-editor Charles Mason, subtly gives the unsubtle arrogance of the man and Henry Oastler works beautifully as a somewhat corrupt police-sergeant.

The script itself, when firing on all cylinders (which is very often indeed) works beautifully. Tanner’s use of language can be breathtaking and surprising and filled this old language-lover’s heart with joy.

As a director he also uses his cast to paint striking pictures against a clever set. Very pleasing indeed.

With a large cast of more-often-than-not untrained actors, there’s bound to be variety in the quality of the performances. Some of them here need more precision – there were fluffed lines a-plenty and some terrible diction left a lot of lines as mush in the air.

The aforementioned clever set also adds to an already long running-time. It twists and extends and clips to other parts of itself to give us twenty-or-so locations but requires manhandling into position by members of the company. It is truly a shame that this aspect oftentimes holds up the action.

The script also needs a huge amount of editing for any future productions. Act 1 alone, on opening night, ran to one hour and forty-five minutes and Act 2 didn’t come down until ten-forty. It’s hard-going on the nether-regions, believe me!

A bullet must be bitten and a red pen wielded mercilessly to make a promising first play into something really rather impressive.

Until 30th April.