Director: Felicity Humfress

Musical Director: Andrew Wheeler

Producer: Cathal Prendergast

Set partly in a music hall and partly in the surrounding East End London streets and buildings, the play is a musical reconstruction of incidents relating to the East End murders which took place between August 31st and November 9th, 1888.

Review:

Director Felicity Humfress and her late husband Steve lifted local drama when they came to this area.

Jack the Ripper, for Mere Players, was one of their many striking productions.

Soaring hire costs and shameful treatment helped to sink that group who, for over 40 years, had been as much of a local institution as the museum.

But there was a warm glow of reminiscence as many familiar faces got together to help launch Palgrave Players, at Botesdale Village Hall.

The play is a music hall version of the Whitechapel murders of 1888; just as ‘Allo, ‘Allo is a version of the French Resistance.

But the East End, the land of “stop muckin’ abaht” and boiled beef and carrots, reveres its villains, turning out in force for the Krays’ funerals.

The feeling of a Mere Players reunion, with added fresh talent, created a bonded company experience.

There was spirited singing, with final victim Sadie Catton standing out, and rollicking music by Andrew Wheeler at the keyboard.

Experienced actors like Roy Preston, a commanding Chairman, and Gary Stodel, gothic in his topper and black cloak as the killer, strode the stage again.

The gang of wide boys bumbled amusingly; and the ladies of the night were a spunky bunch, if (in the writing) some way from the pathetic creatures of reality.

Costumes, by the director and Kim Archer, were as good as we remember them; and Kathy Mills’ choreography helped things move with a swing.

As a memento mori for Mere Players, the show touched the heart, while hailing a new dawn for Palgrave Players.