Brighton drama looks at the hunt for the Yorkshire Ripper

The play is at the New Venture Theatre, Bedford Street, Brighton from Friday, February 14-Saturday, February 22. Tickets at newventure.org.uk.

As Richard Lindfield explains: “It was a sub-editor on the local paper who first coined the name the Yorkshire Ripper to describe one of the UK’s most prolific serial killers. Peter Sutcliffe was eventually found guilty of murdering 13 women and attempting to murder seven others.

“The Incident Room moves the spotlight off the Ripper and shines it instead on the much-criticised attempts by West Yorkshire police to stop the killings.

“The play is set in the real-life incident room at Millgarth Police station, Leeds, and follows the long and frustrating search for the Ripper through the eyes of the officers desperately trying to bring him to justice. As one of the characters points out: ‘We’re looking for a man. A normal man. If we were looking for monster we’d have found him by now.’

“The 200-strong team carried out more than 130,000 interviews, visited more than 23,000 homes and checked 150,000 cars.”

Co-writer David Byrne says he believes as well as exposing the failings of the police investigation, the play will promote the voices of the women Sutcliffe killed. He hopes audiences will no longer imagine them as “victims defined by the usual chequerboard of police mugshots but as real people living private lives tragically cut short.”

Richard, who was responsible for last year’s modern-dress sell-out NVT production of King Lear, added: “The Incident Room is part police drama, part documentary. When I first read the play, I was gripped by the pace at which the story drives forward but also moved by what is a testimony to the ordinariness of the women who died.”

Mark Lester plays George Oldfield, the detective leading the Ripper inquiry; Mai Elphinstone is Tish Morgan, a reporter on the Yorkshire Post; and Angelina Sangster is Meg Winterburn, the sergeant running the Millgarth Incident Room.