London Road **** (2015, Olivia Colman, Kate Fleetwood, Tom Hardy) – Movie Review

Rufus Norris directs a BBC film of the British National Theatre’s stage show by Alecky Blythe and Adam Cork. It’s a really weird, uncomfortable and disturbing idea to turn the real-life story of the 2006 Ipswich, Suffolk, serial killer of prostitutes into a musical.

It gets round this by focusing on the story of the residents of London Road, who reveal they had struggled for years with soliciting and kerb-crawling on their street and later do their best to live their lives through the crisis and its aftermath, eventually having a jolly street party and festooning all their houses with pretty flower baskets. What’s that about? It’s about hope, and renewal, and a fresh start, new life of course, but flower baskets? Well, you’ve got to re-start somewhere.

A resident of the street is charged and then convicted of the murders, after the bodies of five prostitutes are discovered. The show/film is a look at how the community grappled with being at the centre of this media circus event. The dialogue and song lyrics are actual words spoken and recorded in interviews with the residents of London Road conducted by Blythe, and re-enacted by a large ensemble cast, headed by Olivia Colman and boosted by Tom Hardy, who has just one scene as the cabbie, Mark.

It’s unusual and provocative enough to be counted a success, though its actual purpose is mystifying. It is entertaining, though it’s not an entertainment, and it is artful without being an art movie. Some won’t like the whole idea of a musical built round a fairly recent real-life serial killer of prostitutes. Others may find it enlightening and even moving. It is very well staged and performed, a credit to the personnel involved. Colman gives a striking, memorable performance as  Julie, the organizer of Ipswich’s Neighbourhood Watch.

A number of cast members from the original production reprise their roles in the film, including Kate Fleetwood, Clare Burt, Michael Shaeffer, Paul Thornley, Hal Fowler and Nick Holder. Author Blythe plays the BBC newsreader.

The London Road external scenes were filmed in Sutherland Road, Belvedere, London.

Rufus Norris also directed the stage show of London Road, which opened at the National Theatre’s Cottesloe theatre in London, on 14 April 2011 after seven previews.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Movie Review

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