Tom Rees as George Oldfield, Thom Powell as
Andrew Laptew, Tracey Mann as Sylvia Swanson, Stuart Wishart as Dick
Holland and Tori Wishart as Megan Winterburn
The Incident Room
The Nonentities
The Rose Theatre, Kidderminster
*****
This is not so much a whodunit, more of a
who let him do it for so long when it comes to Peter Sutcliffe, the so
called Yorkshire Ripper. We already know the killer so Olivia Hirst and
David Byrne’s play takes that as a given - instead we investigate the
investigation.
Based on the official inquiry of 1982, not made
public until 2006, and other sources it exposes the failings,
frustrations, misogyny and sheer incompetence of West Yorkshire police.
But, to be fair, it was not just West Yorkshire.
Policing in the mid 1970s was still operating almost as if in an Agatha
Christie novel. Computers for policing were non-existent, the discovery
of DNA profiling was a decade away and methods had hardly changed since
the failed hunt for the last Ripper, the infamous Jack.
It is a harsh testament to the failure to catch
Sutcliffe that his eventual apprehension was not through brilliant
detective work, but by sheer chance. Lowly beat bobbies made a routine
stop of Sutcliffe's car and, after a spot check by a probationary PC, he
was arrested - for having false number plates.
Sutcliffe was to be found guilty of 13 murders
and seven attempted murders, and suspected of involvement in several
other attacks and killings. He was to die prison in 2020.
Holding the play together is Tori Wishart as Sgt
Megan Winterburn, tasked with organising the incident room at Millgarth
Police Station in Leeds.
Dick Holland, left, and George Oldfield
with Stef Austin as taxi driver Terrrance Hawkshaw in an interview
of dubious legality
We find her playing the case over and over in her
mind, agonising at missed opportunities, with Det Supt Dick Holland
questioning her recollection and telling her to let it go before it
destroys her. The pair share brief interludes, questioning the real
investigation which is taking place on stage, where the opportunities
are ignored and, like any of Megan’s suggestions, ignored and sidelined.
Megan is an outlier, a woman in a man’s world, a
world where Assistant Chief Constable George Oldfield, played with an
air of dubious authority by Tom Rees, can call the team together with
“right lads” and is openly dismissive of the idea of women in policing,
seeing them more as typists and tea providers.
Holland, played sympathetically by Stuart Wishart,
has respect for Megan, champions her cause, but not far enough to
challenge Oldfield and the superiority he is offered by rank. At one
point he offers her the compliment come put down that she runs the
office so well, if she was promoted who would run the office? A balloon
made of pure lead.
We join the investigation with the murder of
Wilma McCann, the first murder victim, in 1975 and already the
confusion, disorganisation and torrents of information with no
correlation is starting to swamp the team.
The impression is amplified by the set design of
floor to ceiling shelves of box files, mountains of document boxes,
cluttered desks and harsh office lighting created by director Joe
Harper. The investigation, uncoordinated, with everything logged and
written down was creating a data tsunami. Cross referencing was alien
which meant that the nine times Sutcliffe had been interviewed were
recorded, unlinked in separate files.
DS Megan Winterburn, left, undercover
with Jennifer Groome as victim Maureen Long on a night clubbing in the
hope Maureen could recognise the man who tried to kill her.
Prejudice also came into it. There is a
suggestion, not unfounded, that prostitute murders were somehow seen as
. . .well . . . not quite as important as say murders of . . .more . . .
respectable women. All that was to change with the murder of 16 year-old
Jayne MacDonald.
Up to that point the police had reassured people
that the killer targeted sex workers and “respectable” women were safe.
The teenager blew that idea out of the water. No woman was now safe.
Oldfield was driven, liable to explode into
tirades of frustration and anger and, fatally in this case,
suffering from tunnel vision. Along with Holland he was convinced that a
tape and letters from “The Ripper” were genuine, leading the inquiry
down the path of an elaborate hoax. Linguists narrowed the tape accent
to Castletown in Sunderland and The Yorkshire Ripper had become Wearside
Jack. The hoax was to dominate the inquiry, dismissing more promising
lines that didn’t offer a Wearside accent.
Also in Oldfield’s sights was local taxi driver
Terrance Hawkshaw, played by Stef Austin, who worked nights around the
red light areas and knew of some of the victims but only as occasional
customers. No evidence, just Oldfield’s tunnel vision again.
Then there was Det Supt Jim Hobson, played with
an aggressive air by Nik Mann, obsessed with tyre tracks found near the
scene of murders resulting in a list of some 8,000 possible vehicles
which took thousands of fruitless man hours to follow up.
The killing of Jean Jordan in Moss Side in
Manchester brought Det Ch Sup Jack Ridgeway, head of Manchester CID into
the fray. Ridgeway, played by Matt Gibbons, is a bit stereotyped by the
script with a hostile Lancashire-Yorkshire antipathy allied to a less
than friendly rivalry between police forces, not helped by Oldfield
resentment of another force muscling in and what he saw as new fangled
ideas that would never replace his traditional policing.
Ridgeway, played by Matt Gibbons, was to deliver
the first, and to that point, only practical clue, a new line of enquiry
and he injected life and enthusiasm whenever he appeared. He had ideas,
Oldfield had methods.
Becca Wilbrooke, right,
as reporter Tish Morgan, looking for a new line from
Megan or Sylvia
PC Andrew Laptew might have been the most junior
member of the team initially, played with a resigned air by Thom Powell.
He was fast tracked to Det Sgt, despite Megan's superior abilities, but
to his credit, he was to make the vital breakthrough, or it would have
been had Oldfield and Holland put away their prejudices and listened.
Pushing his case though could have stalled or even ended his career. So,
he stayed quiet and Sutcliffe carried on killing.
Equally ambitious in other directions is twice
divorced Sylvia Swanson, the other female on the team, played by Tracey
Man, a civilian employee whose immediate ambition seems to include a
certain Det Supt Holland who was going through a marriage breakup . . .
Then we have Jennifer Groome as Maureen Long, the
fourth victim of Sutcliffe during 1977 and the only one to survive. She
became the reluctant voice of the victims wanting it all to stop, her
survival giving her unwanted celebrity, making her afraid to go out. She
wants to be forgotten, left alone, not just be another Ripper statistic.
All the characters are either based on real
people or are composites of real people with 250 officers working full
time on the case and up to 1,000 involved during the six year long
manhunt.
The exception was Tish Morgan, played by Becca
Wilbrooke, a would be reporter who pops up in the incident room.
She is a dramatic device, a sort of Everyman, a
one woman Greek chorus representing the Press. In reality The
Yorkshire Post would have had a senior reporter, its Crime
Correspondent, covering the story, and journalists just can’t wander
into police incident rooms as if they are pubs.
She is there as a figure to ask some of the
questions the Press were asking, the Press not being exactly blameless
in their coverage, implying, for example, that the murder of Jayne
MacDonald was somehow more tragic than the deaths that had gone before.
The implication being that it had to be taken more seriously now
respectable people were in danger.
Becca develops Tish well from the inexperienced
sympathetic would be journalist, showing empathy at the outset, but, as
her role and career in the Press grows, The Yorkshire Post to
The Daily Mirror to The Sunday Times, she becomes more
ruthless, hounding witnesses, selling books, promoting the headline
grabbing, circulation boosting myth. The less ethical side of my
profession.
The case changed the fundamentals of policing,
women had died or were brutally attacked long after Sutcliffe should
have been apprehended, and this play points out some of the more obvious
missed opportunities - and there were many more along with wild goose
chases with no real purpose.
There is some humour in the script, not jokes or
even comedy, just funny asides or comments to lighten the load and the
cast do well to show the growing tension and the pressure building on
them as the killings go on and the inquiry is virtually no nearer than
it was on day one. Even the celebration at his capture was muted. He had
been caught, but not really by them.
Even the trial denied them. Sutcliffe pleaded not
guilty to thirteen charges of murder, but guilty to manslaughter on the
grounds of diminished responsibility. The judge rejected the plea and
the jury found him guilty of murder. The evidence needing to merely be
interpreted rather than proven.
It is a fascinating, well researched and written
look at a landmark case, the biggest manhunt in UK history, and one
which dragged policing into the technological age. Beautifully and
sympathetically acted the investigation runs to 01-03-25.
Roger Clarke
24-02-25
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