Date: Fri 10-Apr-1998

Publication: Bee

Author: JUDYC

Quick Words:

Saucy-Jack-TheatreWorks-Stern

Full Text:

(rev "Saucy Jack" @TheatreWorks)

Theatre Review--

Still No Answers To London's Unsolved Mystery

By Julie Stern

NEW MILFORD -- Bill Hughes' scarlet-drenched Victorian interior, and Lesley

Neilson-Bowman's wonderful period costumes combine to set the stage for Saucy

Jack , an examination of the gruesome case of Jack the Ripper, the "Saucy

Jack" who butchered five prostitutes in the Whitechapel section of London

before disappearing into oblivion.

Because he was never caught, the mystery of Jack's identity has continued to

fascinate the public imagination up to the present. Speculation centered

around the royal family, and there were rumors of a cover-up.

Why did the murders suddenly stop? Was the guilty party locked up in a private

hospital? Was his career cut short by his own death? TheatreWorks New

Milford's latest production explores these questions with the same amount of

success crime historians have had since the gruesome murders took place (which

is to say, to no positive solution).

Canadian playwright Sharon Pollock uses the device of bringing together a trio

of suspects: Crown Prince Albert Victor, heir to the throne of England; his

former Cambridge tutor, James Stephen; and their friend Montague Druitt,

recently dismissed from his job at an elite boys' school for "unsavory"

reasons. Stephen, who acts as a kind of chorus, informs the audience that all

three will die within a month of one another, which could explain the end of

the crimes.

It is Stephen who has organized the gathering, and planned a reenactment of

the murders, recruiting an "actress" of low reputation to play the parts of

the five victims. Apparently his purpose is to induce his friends (and perhaps

lover, the prince) to confess to being Jack.

Director Jocelyn Beard explains that the real point of the play is to focus on

the forgotten victims rather than on the privileged maniac who killed them.

That is the reason for the ceremonial incantations describing each woman's

life history and death and dismemberment.

Individually, Heather Barrett was quite good in the role of the "actress"

Kate, who had every right to be nervous about this job, whatever her real

profession, and Chris Chamberlain as Montague gave one of his classic

thoughtful and precise performances.

However, the play as a whole does not make a whole lot of sense, and as

directed it had Richard Pettibone in the part of Stephen chewing up the

scenery a little too shrilly, and Brian Reid as the prince being laid back to

the point of catatonia.

Melodramatic and murky, how you feel about Saucy Jack will ultimately be a

matter of taste.

( Saucy Jack continues until April 25, with performances Friday and Saturday

at 8 pm. Tickets are $12 for adults, $10 for seniors and students.

TheatreWorks is at 5 Brookside Avenue; call 350-6863.)