Sunday 7 February 2010

Jack the Ripper: The musical

Yes, that Jack, the notorious Victorian serial killer who haunted the seedy streets of the London slum area known as Whitechapel.

Jack is the star of a big, brassy Broadway-style musical that has been work shopped in Toronto and Calgary and is still being tweaked.

It’s the brainchild of Calgary actor, director and writer Tory Doctor, who enlisted the talents of composer David Zabriskie and author Jack Whyte, to help him tell the story of Jack the Ripper through his female victims.

The Calgary concert version of Whitechapel last spring played to a packed crowd.

When Doctor, who has directed two shows for StoryBook Theatre, heard the company was looking for unique ways to fundraise he offered his musical.

“As is the case with many artists in Calgary, I got my start through StoryBook and it would be a shame not to see the company remain active. I wanted to give something back to the community that encouraged me,” says Doctor.

He contacted the singers and actors from the original Calgary concert and “to a person they all said they wanted to help out and wanted to volunteer their time and talents to aid StoryBook.

“Unfortunately, a few of them have commitments that make that impossible so we’ve had to recast some roles.”

Of the principal roles, David Van Enden will once again sing Jack, with Erin Breen reprising her role of Mary Kelly and Reid Spencer his role as Inspector Aberline.

They will be joined by a supporting cast of 30 singers and actors.

Whitechapel will run in the Pumphouse’s Victor Mitchell Theatre Feb. 11, 12 and 13

2 comments:

John Sinclair said...

Lets hope that they get Mary Kellys' accent right this time!
They always play her as Irish, but she was actually brought up in Wales, and began her sad career as a prostitute - that led to her eventual death at the hands of the Ripper - in Cardiff!
Note: when I went to see the Coens' From Hell (based very loosely on the Alan Moore comics) I saw it at the cinemas in Mary Ann Street, Cardiff.
It gave me a strange and melancholy feeling as contemporary reports of the time say that street (though much different at the time) was where Mary Kelly plyed her terrible trade....

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