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Dateline: 28th September, 2004
Shipman Play to Premiere Next Month Next month Manchester's Libray Theatre Company is to present Beyond Belief: Scenes from the Shipman Inquiry, a docu-drama which asks the question, How was it that Dr Harold Shipman got away with so much for so long … Britain's most prolific serial killer was brought to justice on 31st January 2000, when he was found guilty of murdering fifteen of his patients; he is known to have murdered over 200 people. In what many saw as the final betrayal, Shipman committed suicide in January this year. The chain of circumstances which allowed Shipman to escape detection and prosecution for many years was investigated in Dame Janet Smith's Inquiry of 2001 - Dame Janet intends to submit her Final Reports this year. Edited verbatim from that Inquiry, Dennis Woolf's Beyond Belief is a compelling insight using the convention of documentary theatre, in which actors play the actual witnesses and lawyers involved. Woolf, a pioneer of the genre on television, has many impressive credits to his name including McLibel! and Scott of the Arms Antics. In Beyond Belief Woolf has distilled months of complex testimony into a revealing and thought-provoking theatre event. Whilst the why of the case may never be understood, Woolf illuminates how it was that Shipman got away with so much for so long. Library Theatre Company director Chris Honer says, "Theatre can play a powerful role in exploring issues of social concern, and the Shipman case raises all kinds of questions about the trust we place in professional figures, their accountability, and why we do or don't blow the whistle when we suspect something is going wrong. The focus is on how we can avoid such a tragedy happening again. Whilst we have no wish to add to the grief and suffering of the families involved, we make no apologies for using drama as a way of coming to terms with difficult or sensitive issues. I think it is important that the how of this story is told, not the unknowable why." Beyond Belief - Scenes from the Shipman Inquiry runs from 22nd October to 20th NOvember at the Library Theatre, Manchester. Please note that all three Archive indices are very long and will therefore take some time to download.
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