Derbyshire-based Rumpus Theatre Company is buying into the public’s massive interest in Jack the Ripper by reviving John Goodrum’s play The Ripper Files.
In this whodunnit, “the laughs vie with the jumps” as the play explores the details of the Ripper case as well as travelling back in time to look at the private lives of those involved.
In 1988, Charles William Lestrange was a newly promoted detective inspector in the Metropolitan Police when the “autumn of terror”, as it became known, was at its highest. Thirteen years later, ably assisted by ex-Constable Samuel Edwards and Edwards’ “close friend”, rising music hall star Miss Elsie Fordham, Lestrange looks at the ghoulish events in Whitechapel. Then matters take a wholly unexpected turn...
David Gilbrook, who will play Charles Lestrange, is a Rumpus regular and was Major Petkoff in the company’s presentation of George Bernard Shaw’s Arms and the Man, which completed a tour in November 2024.
Mark Pearce, who will take the role of Samuel Edwards, will make his first appearance with Rumpus. In 2009, he was Fletcher in Porridge by Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais at The Lowry, Salford.
Sarah Wynne Kordas, who will be Elsie Fordham, was Raina in Arms and the Man and took the role of Adelaide in Karoline Leach’s The Mysterious Mr Love in the Classic Thriller Season at Nottingham’s Theatre Royal in summer 2024.
John Goodrum is director and designer. Gilbrook is also sound designer. Costume supervisor is Karen Henson.
The Ripper Files, which Rumpus last performed in 2013, will open at Rotherham Civic Theatre on Sunday 16 February. It will then tour to Swansea, Basingstoke, Sudbury, Windsor, Dunstable, Middlesbrough, Eastbourne, Wakefield, Lincoln, Stevenage, Stafford, Runcorn, Newtown in Powys, Broadstairs, Winchester, Hemel Hempstead, Chelmsford, Billingham and Grantham until Saturday 1 November.