BEYOND BELIEF. To 20 November.

Manchester

BEYOND BELIEF
by Dennis Woolf

Library Theatre To 20 November 2004
Mon-Thu 7.30pm Fri/Sat 8pm Mat 10 Nov 2pm, 6,13,17,20 Nov 3pm
Audio-described 17 Nov 7.30pm 20 Nov 3pm
BSL Signed 10 Nov 7.30pm
Captioned 16 Nov
Post-show discussion 28 Oct
Runs 2hr 45min One interval

TICKETS: 0161 236 7110
ltcbox@libraries.manchester.gov.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 25 October

Outstanding re-creation of an Inquiry, helping make sense of things literally beyond many of the participants' belief.Though it's title has already been used by Emlyn Williams for his book on the Moors Murders - Manchester's previous highest-profile serial-killings -and its format's familiar from Kilburn's Tricycle Theatre, the Library's new show remains freshly thought-through.

In condensing two-and-a-half years of enquiry into as many hours, Dennis Woolf
has caught key moments and the essence of Dame Janet Smith's Inquiry into a crime as previously unimaginable in its own dimensions as the 9/11 attacks had been.

Every word's verbatim from the Inquiry transcript into the multiple murders committed by an east Manchester doctor suspected by few and detected by none until he stepped into the spotlight of comprehensible motivation by forging a will in his favour.

Institutional faults come to light, but so does chance; if a senior detective hadn't been on leave might he have been allocated the case and seen it through more thoroughly?

Sensible people suspected, but as so many of the early, less authority-figure, witnesses say, where could they turn? When taxi-driver John Shaw noticed how many contracts to ferry patients to Shipman's surgery were being cancelled owing to death, he tried warning a patient in his cab. She immediately changed taxi-driver. Shipman was over-subscribed with trusting elderly women patients, "queuing up to be murdered".

If the patients sensed nothing wrong as their GP pumped lethal doses into them, how should anybody else? For the police, it was a situation they weren't trained for - no obviously murdered body, just suspicions from people who often didn't want to be named.

Which doesn't stop witnesses giving themselves away in accounts of records not kept, or in office humour that takes on serious dimensions (Shipman's assistant adding "discovering bodies in treatment room" to her job description).

And in their body language (often derived from Inquiry videos). The doctor who countersigned Shipman's death certificates without checks leans back in her chair, her face with an unfortunate default mode of complacent smile; a detective sits arms coolly over his chest, till the questioning toughens up.

This is a riveting show, scrupulously directed by Chris Honer. It never exploits witnesses, nor pushes us for reactions. Nor is there a dead, unconsidered moment - which is why the time flies grippingly by.

Dawn Allsopp's recreation of Manchester Town Hall provides a calm anchor, just as Romy Baskerville's soft-spoken Smith calmly begins by setting out domestic details, interrupts to have windows opened ( maximum comfort to consider multiple murders) then finally closes her laptop with thanks to all the staff.

There's a quiet start and end (no curtain-call) with houselights left half-on over the audience throughout; making us part of, rather than merely spectators to, the Inquiry. Honer rightly places his one addition - colour projections of the 15 known victims (there are probably hundreds more) between images of Shipman - at the start of act 2, rather than sensationalising the show's outer edges.

The cast play supremely well, remarkably free of actorly temptations to add mannered details or over-colour the voice. Two are exceptional. Cate Hamer is quiet and patiently determined, assertive but never aggressive as lead investigator Caroline Swift, writing occasional notes, but never thrown from her course - and displaying a moment of dry humour.

And Joan Kempson, catching both the sense and honesty of a care worker, someone unused to public speaking, considering her answers, giving a few words then stopping dead. Kempson returns as Primrose Shipman, the wife still fighting for the husband she believes innocent, yet with hand occasionally moving to the corner of an eye, or resetting her bag strap on her shoulder, a picture of contained terror.

It's a tribute to these selfless performances they work both as figures on stage and enlarged as video images screened to the Inquiry. For those involved this could be trauma or therapy; for the rest it's top-level theatre taking its community seriously, by bringing understanding to regions where belief has been already forced.

Dame Janet Smith: Romy Baskerville
Caroline Swift QC: Cate Hamer
Christopher Melton QC/Detective Chief Superintendent Bernard Postles: Jim Millea
Richard Lissack QC/Nigel Reynolds: Christopher Wright
Andrew Spink QC: C P Hallam
Bruce Stuart/John Shaw: Stephen Mackenna
Philip Gaisford/Chief Superintendent David Sykes/Robert Gray: Simon Molloy
Dorothy Foley/Primrose Shipman: Joan Kempson
Ghislaine Brant/Alison Massey: Kate Layden
Dr Susan Booth/Carol Chapman: Eileen O' Brien
Deborah Bambroffe/Gillian Morgan: Alison Burrows
Detective Inspector David Smith: David Crellin
Court Officials: Trish Fearon, Paul Stevens, Ruth Westley

Director: Chris Honer
Designer: Dawn Allsopp
Lighting: Jake Taylor
Sound: Paul Gregory
Assistant director: David Kenworthy

2004-10-26 17:59:32