Whodunnit – the misogynist doctor, the green copper, the Sally Army puritan, the pioneering journalist, the celebrated actor with a particular talent for playing monsters, or the Polish cobbler with the big leather apron and the solo style that’s a tad Peter Sellers?
With a swiftly revolving carousel of suspects, slanting neo-gothic set, a script alert to the social forces of the time and 25 songs as tightly packed as its audience, this Jack the Ripper musical (they’re practically their own theatrical subgenre) almost succeeds in diverting attention from its lack of originality. If only the spirit of the East End were given stronger embodiment than in the stock characters of a street philosopher and an oversexed landlady with loud stockings.
Creator Gerry Ware has written songs for Connie Fisher. He flashes a more subversive streak – all too briefly – in a mock-spiritual called ‘Eight Little Whores’. A discordantly modernist rendition of a post-mortem report wouldn’t have been out of place on Scott Walker’s ‘The Drift’. Needless to say, no one leaves humming ‘The abdominal cavity emptied of all its viscera…’