Overview
Below is our review from the opening performance of Yours Truly.
It's a twisted up version of Jack the Ripper's tale, pulling together royalty, sex, money, blood and mystery, all the makings of a rip-roaring thriller.
Set in 1888, Yours Truly is a gothic thriller, something rarely written today for theatre. This did have my accomplice and I wondering how they were going to do the bloody bits live on stage, but with an approach that was less blood more smoke, mirrors and sound, the play avoided dissolving into a corny magician's act. Yes, Sean Lynch's often dramatic soundscape kept the eerie tone throughout the piece, to the extent that my friend and I chose to switch from our front-row seats for the second half so that in the quite probable event that an audience member was slain, we would be spared by sitting in the middle of the crowd.
Convincing acting held up the storyline, with lower-class prostitutes cavorting around the upper-class stutterer with, oh golly gosh, a royal connection. Sick ripper surgeon Dr Gull was frightening enough for us to shift seats, but his lengthy killer-doctrine diatribes a little hard to get into, and not just because killing sprees are quite obviously not ok.
The play was far from seamless, but it worked especially well in the grungy Basement environment, transporting the audience to the underskirt of Victorian England.
Yours Truly is part of the Basement Fest, the venue's boutique festival of underground talent that runs until 22 October.