There's something rather admirable in writing a play about Mary Kelly, the last victim of Jack the Ripper, which entirely avoids even a whisper of sensationalism. There's also something amiss when the evening turns out to be as doggedly dull as this one. Glyn Maxwell's achievement is to present the Irish-born Kelly as a vibrant young woman caught like a fly in the teeming back streets of 19th century Whitechapel, but also in the web of her own deceptions and self-deceptions. In Jennifer Kidd's terrific performance, Mary Kelly rises from the grave as a real, living breathing woman, not just another statistic or footnote in the on-going Ripper industry.
Maxwell draws on historical fact, and in particular on the shadowy figure of Joe Barnett, a Billingsgate foreman who lived with Kelly towards the end of her life and who gave evidence at her inquest. Here Barnett, superbly played by John Wark, is an absurdly naive fish caught hook, line and sinker by Kelly. Strangely ignorant of his young lady's true profession, Wark's attempts at self-advancement are wrecked by his infatuation with the mercurial and frequently pickled Kelly whose instincts for self-preservation do not extend to moving a couple of miles west to the Grays Inn Road.
The play is beautifully designed by Paul Burgess, but the direction does little to add coherence, and while Maxwell creates a pressing sense of a world where a serial killer is on the loose the entire evening seems to lack both tension and purpose. You don't expect Maxwell to come up with a solution to the 120-year-old mystery, but you do expect him to demonstrate a more pressing reason than he does here for revisiting it.
· Until May 24. Box office: 020-7503 1646
