About the play:

London Road is a verbatim-theatre musical with book and lyrics by Alecky

Blythe and music by Adam Cork. It is about the impact on the community
around London Road in Ipswich of the series of murders carried out there by
Steve Wright in 2006, and the frenzied media interest that ensued.
It was developed by the National Theatre, London, and first performed there
in the Cottesloe auditorium on 14 April 2011 (previews from 7 April).
The story:
Development
“My first interviews from Ipswich were collected on 15th December 2006;
five bodies of sex-workers had been found but no arrests had been made.
The town was at the height of its fear. I had been gripped and appalled by
the spiraling tragedies that were unravelling in Ipswich during that dark
time. It would of course be a shocking experience for any community, but
the fact that it took place in this otherwise peaceful rural town, never before
associated with high levels of crime or soliciting, made it all the more
upsetting for the people who lived there. It was not what was mainly being
reported in the media about the victims or the possible suspects that drew
me to Ipswich, but the ripples it created in the wider community in the lives
of those on the periphery. Events of this proportion take hold in all sorts of
areas outside the lead story, and that is what I wanted to explore.” (Alecky
Blythe)

The musical traces the impact of the murders on the residents of London
Road over a period from December 2006 until July 2008. The community
had struggled for years with the soliciting and kerb-crawling that they
frequently encountered in the area. As Steve Wright, the occupant of
number 79, was arrested, charged and then convicted of the murders,
residents grappled with the media frenzy and what it meant to be at the
epicentre of this tragedy.

The book and lyrics are based on Alecky Blythe's extensive recorded
interviews with the real residents of London Road, and composer Adam
Cork’s score is a response to the melodic and rhythmic speech patterns
captured on those recordings.
The National Theatre premiere was directed by Rufus Norris and designed by
Katrina Lindsay. The cast was Clare Burt, Rosalie Craig, Kate Fleetwood, Hal
Fowler, Nick Holder, Claire Moore, Michael Shaeffer, Nicola Sloane, Paul
Thornley, Howard Ward and Duncan Wisbey.

It is crucial, as the creator and the name of the genre indicate, that the exact
words of the interviewed people are those which shape the prose as well as
the musical parts of the play and special attention is given, not only to the
words but to the unintelligible parts of the interviews like the stutters of the
interviewees, or incomplete words interrupted by other thoughts and
stimuli of the environment. Those parts of the interviews in particular
function as motives for the scores written by Adam Cork.

The playwright's process:

You listen to the words of these people speak and then you copy exactly, not
just what they say, but really how they say it, so you copy their accent
intonation, any coughs and stutters (…)
I set myself those rules that the only words you hear on stage are words
that I've captured on my table being said by those real people so for me it's
not just about having
having a dictophone, you actually have a license into them and it's amazing
how much people open up to you it gives people some sort of a sense of
their own lives by talking about the things they're going through.
it's not enough just to kind of read it in the paper and then go to theater
and say I think I want to make a play about; there is legwork, initially to see
whether it has potential and to see whether there are some strong
characters that I can hopefully latch onto, to help me through the story.
(Alecky Blythe)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u21hmi7O6xE
 It becomes very clear from early on in the play that the character of Julie, a
resident of the London Road neighborhood, serves as that strong character
with her initiative to start a ‘’garden competition’’ amongst the houses of
the neighborhood.

(London Road, ACT1, SECTION 1)

JulieI come up with the idea of doin’ ‘London Road in Bloom’  (Beat.)to make the area
look pretty – an’ that an’ getting people – involved – an’ getting interested in their road
and their homes again. 

As my work is made from recorded everyday conversations and replicated by

actors as authentically as possible, musical theatre, with its necessary
affectation, is not a genre that sits easily with me. I wanted to find out if I
could adapt the verbatim technique in a way which incorporated music
without losing its honesty.
The considerable musical dimension of London Road has required a
rethinking of the presentation of this recorded-delivery verbatim technique.
By setting some of the material to music – even though Adam has been
scrupulous in notating the tune of the spoken voice so that it remains
faithful to how it was first said – the fact that at times characters sing their
words instead of speak them as they did in real life, is a departure from the
purer verbatim form of my past endeavors. In keeping with the songs being
learnt from the score, the spoken text has also been learnt. With both the
songs and the spoken text the audio has remained intrinsic to the process, so
that the original delivery as well as the words are learnt.(Alecky Blythe)
Conclusion:The reviews of the play were mostly welcoming to this new
genre of verbatim theater in a musical form.

CONCLUSION:
Having read the play and having watched the movie, it has become clear to
me that this genre of verbatim theater could be dramaturgically studied as a
contemporary form of tragedy, as it contains basic elements and structures
of an ancient Greek tragedy, such as blood-shed plot-starting points, the use
of meter and melody and prose.
Meter and melody in Greek tragedy are used to underline crucial events or
express collective responses to events, the latter being the plot-basis of
London Road.
This play also relates to tragedy because it’s main protagonist is not an
individual but a group of individuals that operates under the same premise
and circumstances. They all share the same neighborhood that has been
stigmatized by the sex-workers’ murders. They are all responding and
commenting, re-acting to the events of the plot through musical expressions
such as singing and dancing, which in this context means rhythmic, group
movement and not literal dancing.
However, apart from the actual form of the play and the narrative
techniques, it also is of great importance that real facts are depicted,
brought to life and essentially become an ‘’artistic file’’, a form of a legacy
for future generations of spectators that are from this play on able to have
access to critical moments of contemporary history; moments that-through
verbatim theater- can be preserved in the collective memory rather than
forgotten after a brief appearance on a day’s news.