East of England ( 1 reviews)

The Incident Room

OPEN 24/02/2023 - 04/03/2023

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Venue Name: Abbey Theatre

Venue Postcode: AL12DL

Website: https://www.abbeytheatre.org

Credits: Olivia Hirst and David Byrne

Box Office phone number: 01727857861

Societies: Company of Ten at Abbey Theatre

Beautifully crafted real life crime drama…

For all those with a Happy Valley shaped gap in their lives, pacy, driving crime drama The Incident Room opens on the Main Stage of the Abbey Theatre in February.

Set in Leeds, with Detective Sergeant Megan Winterburn at its heart as she investigates the horrific, real life crimes of Peter Sutcliffe, The Incident Room is an intense police thriller. With public and political pressure mounting on all officers, the drama gains urgency as each new killing is discovered. Women living in fear of male violence, institutional misogyny flourishing in a police force and male detectives ignoring critical information because the source is a woman. All very 1970s, all shockingly current.

Director Tina Swain writes that The Incident Room is not about the murders, but about the investigation process. Placing a junior female officer at the centre of the play gives it resonance with current cases where misogyny and sexual harassment have been in the headlines. News footage of the period shows the anger at the police’s failure to catch the killer. A man was murdering women, but it was women who were told to stay at home to avoid becoming his victims, sparking the Reclaim the Night movement in protest against the curfew.

Avoiding sensationalism, the writers focus their intense drama on the innovations, failures and daily interactions of police officers trying to solve the most horrific serial killer case this country has witnessed.