|
|
 |
| |
Press should reserve its judgment on Monsters
PREVIEW - MONSTERS
Arcola Theatre
THE posters advertising the UK premiere of Swedish playwright Niklas Rådström’s Monsters are blank save for the play’s title and its tagline: “A play about the killing of James Bulger.”
Such bleakness is intentional, says Christopher Haydon, who is directing the drama, due to be staged next month at the Arcola.
“We made a conscious decision not to use images in our posters,” Haydon says. “We felt that to use images, particularly the CCTV picture from the shopping centre (showing 10-year-olds Jon Venables and Robert Thompson leading away their two-year-old victim) would be to sensationalise the subject matter. That was something we wanted to avoid.”
Ironically perhaps, the production has proved controversial despite Haydon’s best efforts.
Mothers Against Murder and Aggression, which was set up after James Bulger’s murder, have said the play is in bad taste and have accused those involved of exploiting a terrible event to “make a name for themselves”.
Haydon refutes such allegations, but says the reaction of the press has been “entirely predictable”.
“None of the people who have written articles about the play has seen it,” he says. “They haven’t seen how we’re dealing with the issues so there are a lot of assumptions involved.
“When I read the play for the first time I thought it was an extremely powerful piece.
“It questions the nature of evil, what it means to commit a crime and how we as a society deal with traumatic events like these, which have happened throughout history.
“In the media, Thompson and Venables were called monsters – the play questions that but never forgets that the real suffering and the real tragedy lies with James, his mother and family.”
The play is based on material already in the public arena, and in his research Rådström drew on Blake Morrison’s book As If, which is about the murder of James Bulger and the themes it raised.
Haydon says that he is not overly bothered by what journalists have written about Monsters. “I’m focusing on making the show now,” he says, “rather than spending time reading what people who haven’t seen the play write about it.”
• |
|
|
|
|
|
|
