In Act Two of London Road the ensemble clears the stage, the music quiets, and the curtains come down over the living room set, leaving three sex-workers sitting in a row, their legs crossed, tapping their feet and biting their fingernails. Their voices are raw and they sing straight to us: “We’ve all stopped working now.” The restraint in this moment hits us hard. These are real people, and this really happened.

"It delineates exactly what we need to hear: the voices of the people"

I was intrigued by this production from the moment first I heard of it. It’s the story of the community of Ipswich in the midst and aftermath of the serial killings of five sex-workers in 2006. Most prominently and somewhat disturbingly, the primary characters are only connected by their residence on London Road, where the convicted killer, Steve Wright, lived for the ten weeks during which the murders unfolded. It’s a verbatim musical, and its lyrics come directly from real interviews, incorporating every pause or verbal stumble. The music, meanwhile, is incredibly difficult, and musical director Joe Beighton, the band, and the cast pull it off beautifully. Set designer Samantha Ruston’s six living rooms, stacked in rows, allow actors to pull curtains up and down over each room, guiding us in and out of the story.

So long, show-tunes

‘Despite a shaky opening featuring noticeably tense actors grappling clumsily with the verbatim style, the play found its stride in the vivid street scene, where performers darted about in subtly choreographed hysteria’. From here, the deftness of director Ellie Coote becomes clear, and as the play unfolds it only becomes clearer. This production’s handling of its tense and multifarious premise did not disappoint my original intrigue in the least, but only furthered it more.

It would be nearly impossible to pick out individual actors’ performances from the ensemble spectacle they’ve produced, and that’s the point. This is a play about the effect of horror on a community, and the real ways in which people react: often darkly humorous, and sometimes heartbreaking or ignorant or even cruel. Each actor’s dedication is obvious, and as individuals they portray impressive ranges of tones and characters. In their little living room boxes, they lounge comfortably, with the particular calm of middle-aged couples or families in their suburban homes. During the scenes surrounding the trial of Steve Wright, they are frantic and ambitious as TV broadcasters fighting to capture the story.

"It’s a miracle that it all was able to come together so quickly"

As a collective achievement, they’ve managed to portray the trauma and the healing of a community. The effect is provocative but not indulgent. Rather, over time, it delineates exactly what we need to hear: the voices of the people. In the elation and collective jubilance of the annual garden competition–an event that, in the aftermath of the town’s events, marked more than just the planting of flowers–we are led to believe that everyone, even the local police, can recognise and move on from the residual infamy of Steve Wright. But, as with every road and every house in England, there are fault lines. As with the three sex-workers, aligned starkly in a row, emotions are still raw and inconclusive and people are left behind.

At times the ambition of the production as a whole may have taken away from this vulnerability. The volume of the band was a bit too loud, so that it could be hard to pick out the lyrics, which was unfortunate in a play so focused on its words. Projections onto the white curtains upstage, presumably meant to heighten the realism of outdoor sets, were a bit clumsy. The actors’ sheer precision, too, might have compromised the reality of their characters. At times they could be so spectacular, so obviously professional, that the pathos lost some of its subtlety.

The overall production, nonetheless, was incredible. It’s a miracle that it all was able to come together so quickly, and that must be accredited to the achievements of the production team, including producer Louisa Dales and stage manager Helena Edmondson. This is a show that is aware of its theatricality, and all of its components definitely demonstrate their chops