Killing Jack-a darkly thrilling plunge into the world where women return to take back their stories.

‘The play is for every woman who has had to walk home alone-looking over her shoulder.’

Today, our theatre reviewer Ruth Kettle-Frisby, interviews play writer Sadie Hasler on her latest masterpiece ‘Killing Jack’.  

As we prepare for Autumn cold chilly nights, the Queen’s Theatre presents us with the perfect play to capture an eerie, chilling feel to set the mood for this fantastic thriller.

The Autumn of Terror 1888-when five women are brutally slaughtered in the slum warrens of Whitechapel, the world’s biggest manhunt begins and the infamous Jack the Ripper legend is born.

Halloween 2023 and best friends Jules, and Maz are dressed to kill and ready for fun.But on the night of the dead, a shattering event occurs and something awakens in the old bones of Whitechapel.

Brutal Victorian murderer, known as ‘Jack the Ripper’, has been deeply romanticised in the public consciousness. As the subject of enduring morbid fascination, shrouded in enigmatic charm, he has been elevated to lasting infamy on the back of serial femicide. 

I spoke to award-winning playwright, Sadie Hasler, to find out more about her exciting new play, Killing Jack…

1. Killing Jack is set to be a nail-biting, darkly entertaining thriller. 

Who is the play for, and what can your audience expect from this performance?

Killing Jack is a dance of many things – it’s thrilling, pacy, spooky, supernatural, funny, tear-jerky, fiery, loving, riotous, activist, wild – with some absolute cracking songs to boot. I have absolutely adored working with composer Paul Herbert on creating big magical moments. It’s all I want to do now.

The play is for every woman who has ever had to walk home alone in the dark, looking over her shoulder, holding her keys, not making eye contact. It’s for every woman who didn’t make it home safe. It’s for every woman who has ever felt powerless within a system made by men for men. It’s a gesture of solidarity to all these women, but it is also a sustained effort not to preach to the converted. That is not what is needed. This play is also for those who know they need to reconsider their role in a world where women still are not safe. It is for men and women who need to know the only way they can stay relevant in a changing world is to be an ally. The play is not a bitter swipe at anyone though – the relationship between the women and Christopher, a Ripper tour guide, is a really redemptive and hopeful journey that really does try to explore how we can all contribute to change.

2. Did you feel that as a woman, you had something unique to offer in your conception of what has become a fairly commonplace narrative in British culture?

I felt like it was a really good story to tackle for a theatre on the outskirts of east London, to look at one of the world’s biggest true crime legends that originated just down the road, and turn it on its head. I certainly felt that a female playwright along with a brilliant team of female minds should be the one to create a show that challenged the traditional narrative of the canonical five victims of Jack the Ripper. Luckily I found Hallie Rubenhold’s book The Five after I’d drowned in male-written Ripper theories for quite a while, so she became my guiding light in the research department, and a reminder that it absolutely was going to take more than one woman to assert dignity and truth for Polly Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes and Mary Jane Kelly. I definitely feel that women are the only ones who should be approaching and adapting this narrative now. It has to be an act of excavation, reclamation, and extreme empathy. While doing my research I compiled a list of books, films, plays, documentaries etc centred on Jack the Ripper and his ‘cheeky common prostitute’ victims – and a staggering proportion were all the same insulting and tedious offers by men. Women jiggling their way down dark alleyways pursued by the top-hatted silhouetto of a man. YAWN. It’s 2023. That stuff won’t wash anymore. Women need to take their stories back, and tell them their way. And men need to back off and find something else to amuse themselves; preferably in the direction of their own development.

3. I was recently given a rape alarm in a café by a friendly PCSO. It got me thinking: ‘Have we accepted as a society that women get raped, and that it’s women’s responsibility to protect ourselves?’ 

Does the play shed any light on the intersecting systemic causes of the plights of Polly, Annie, Liz, Kate and Mary-Jane (and probably others, including Martha Tabram), and how they linger on for women today?

I don’t think a thorough intersectional analysis could find enough space in just one play. I have been so heartbroken at how much of my research must resign itself to the background – I could have written five plays on each woman. But what I think we have done as a company is really drilled down into the central tenet that these women died because they lived in poverty, and on the particular nights of their death they did not have the fourpence for a bed. They slept on the street, and they got killed by a coward. That’s the essence. Of course you can look at many other factors which made up these women’s lives – alcoholism, addiction, untreated PTSD, possible undiagnosed postpartum depression, grief, mental health, incurable illnesses, loneliness – but the reason they were on the street on the nights of their deaths was because they could not afford a bed. That is it. Poverty. Anyone who thinks they wanted to be outside, ill, in the cold, in the wee small hours of the night just so they could give in to their lascivious need to sell their own bodies can come and have a chat with me at Queen’s Theatre Hornchurch during the run. I’m ready.

4. How conscious were you of the Ripper’s culturally entrenched tendency to re-centre himself within your own feminist narrative? 

The Ripper does not centre himself in anything. The Ripper doesn’t exist. The Ripper is dead. And the likelihood is we’ll never know who he is. And why should we care; we can’t change anything now but how we tell the stories and how we endow the women with humanity, truth, and dignity. The Ripper – a concept, not a man – is continually centred by – sorry – mostly men who think that any old iteration orimagining of this unknown man is the singularly most important part of the whole thing. The Ripper is centred by parasites who think he is the best angle for the story; who use the tired old tropes to get attention that they can’t get for themselves in more creative or intellectually robust ways. It’s so boring, and so transparent. Every time a Ripperologist feels it’s a good idea to regurgitate their theory that the women MUST ABSOLUTELY DEFINITELY HAVE BEEN PROSTITUTES just tells me that these people to some degree believed that these women deserved their fate. That is what is entrenched; the subconscious apportioning of blame. This notion of all women being dividable into either the Madonna camp or the Whore camp needs to be hurled on the burn pile with the flat-earth theories and the works of L Ron Hubbard.

The moment I realised there was no way I could have an actual Ripper in my Ripper play without taking something important away from the women, I cut him. I had to fight the dramatist’s murkier people-pleasing instinct though – because it was tempting to include the chase and fights scenes I’d written. Which were kick-arse by the way. But maybe that could be another play – where Jack is caught, and he’s really bloody disappointing. That might end the mass frottage that goes on over Jack the Ripper. If enough women creatively emasculate the legend out of existence.

5. What’s coming up next for you, and do you think you’ll continue to use your art to empower women who are marginalised by their class?

I’ve spent so long in the company of these remarkable women, and yes, with Jack, that I’m excited to give my heart a little break. I’ve got several plays that have been waiting for some attention, and some R&D stuff lined up, so it’ll be fun to move on. But wherever I go now, Polly, Annie, Liz, Kate & Mary Jane will always be with me.

6. Do you have any advice for aspiring playwrights in Havering? 

Go and see as much theatre as you can. NTLive is great if you can’t. Devour scripts – go sit in Queen’s Theatre Hornchurch’splay library with a cuppa! While you’re writing, always read your work aloud, or get some pals together to read it for you – it is such a key part to creating real authentic characters, and to honing your instinct for editing. I have so much stuff I could share! I’m actually about to launch something called Script Buddy – so if you want to be kept in the loop, follow me and message on Insta @sadiehasler, or email me on haslersadie@gmail.com

Sadie Hasler is a multi-award-winning playwright, actor, and columnist. She has worked widely in Theatre, TV & Radio, and on the international comedy circuit. Her plays Pramkicker(2016), Fran & Leni (2017) and Stiletto Beach (2019) have been published by Bloomsbury Methuen Drama. Sadie’s work has been produced in Washington DC, Chicago, Sydney, Melbourne, Oslo, Rome, Milan, Asti, London, Edinburgh, & around the UK. Misfits (2020) is published by Salamander Street. Sadie is currently under commission to adapt a series of four Sunday Times Bestsellers for the West End. She is part of the Old Vic Playwriting group working with Ella Hickson.

Sadie Hasler who has written the fantastic ‘Killing Jack.’

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