THE same company, talking Scarlet, which staged last week’s ghostly tale at the Civic returns this week with a thriller based on the Jack the Ripper case injecting it with melodramatic bloodcurdling screams and portentous musical chords as the murder mystery develops.

The play was written by Brian Clemens, prolific creator of TV series from the 1960s onwards, who died in January. Staged as a tribute, this production is a family affair with both his sons involved, Sam Clemens playing Holmes and George Clemens behind the scenes as technical director.

Based around theories about the never-solved identity of the Ripper, it has the fictional detective engaged on working out the crime even as yet another prostitute falls victim to frenzied killing in London’s Whitechapel.

Imaginative staging enhances the gothic tale’s rapidly changing scenes. With minimum props for the detective’s study where he and Dr Watson, an alternately bluff and bemused George Telfer, bash out the many strands of the puzzle, the broad panorama of Victorian London’s skyline and some of its darkest corners are conveyed through images projected on to backdrop drapes, while authentic sounds, such as horses hooves on cobbled streets, add to the atmospheric effects.

The painted views of London tie in with one theory aired in the play, that the artist Walter Sickert was the culprit. Another, that it was a member of the royal family, is suggested by The Stranger whose demented pleading in Baker Street triggers events.

Sam Clemens, fresh-faced and with a derring-do eagerness, is not entirely convincing as Conan Doyle’s dispassionate and ascetic Holmes, and the suggestion of a broken heart over a lost love is not compatible with a man who disliked and distrusted women. Other characters are underplayed, merely ciphers to an attention-holding narrative with political intrigue and an ultimately implausible conclusion.

Pru Farrier