The most provocative thing about this show is the title. Chris Bush and Matt Winkworth’s musical is definitely not a call for the murder of a self-styled hate figure. Rather, it’s an intelligent, thoughtful and often wryly enjoyable look at the polarisation of public debate in the age of social media, and what happens when it ceases to be a discourse and becomes a mere echo chamber. Lucy Osborne’s design of stairs, platforms and movable screens features the lights of thousands of endlessly winking mobile phones.
Yes, Katie Hopkins is dead, cut down in public by an unknown assailant. But while some celebrate her passing by taking to the streets to sing Ding Dong! The Witch Is Dead, the police search for her killer without success.
Kayleigh (an impressive debut from Bethzienna Williams), an intern at an Amnesty-style charity is asked to compile a dossier explaining Katie’s appeal. What she finds confounds her expectations, appals her boss (“I asked for a dossier, not a love letter”) and leads to her setting up a group called Justice4Katie. Soon the hashtag #JeSuisKatie is trending.
Justice is also on the mind of trainee soliciter Shayma Hussaini (Maimuna Memon) who is returning to work after she rocked the boat by making a sexual harassment allegation against her superior. She tries patience further when she takes up the cause of office cleaner Elena (Amy Booth-Steel) whose cousin is one of 12 people killed in a caravan fire on a fruit-picking farm. Their deaths have passed almost unnoticed in the hysteria surrounding Hopkins’ demise.
The two stories never quite meet, but offer a series of reverberating reflections on free speech, confirmation bias, our obsession with celebrity, who gets justice, and how humanity and truth are casualties in a world of instant messaging, unchecked news reports and videos that go viral at the click of a button. Both Kayleigh and Shayma are, like Katie, women who refuse to be silenced and pay a price for not conforming to expectations. There is a particularly striking moment when Shayma responds to racial harassment on a train, to startling effect.
Bush and director James Grieve set out their stall early by pointing to the inability of theatre, or indeed any medium, to tell the whole truth, while slyly suggesting that what we are watching is a verbatim play based on real interviews and news reports. But, of course, it is a fiction.
It’s very neatly done, as is Winkworth’s deliciously inventive score, which pulsates and bleeps like a mobile device and yet still has a lyrical underscoring, and plenty of earworms. Music and words are sometimes in harmony, but often cleverly used in counterpoint to each other. Most importantly, the score offers an emotional hook that Bush’s clever, inquiring script sometimes lacks.
The show has pitched itself in the realm of Jerry Springer: The Opera, and there are similarities. But it is less outrageously satirical and eager to shock, and more reflective. There are moments when it feels a little dry, and it’s definitely overlong and repetitive. But with tightening and cuts, it should shine, thanks to its brilliant cast and willingness to grapple intelligently with how technology is changing us.
- At Theatr Clwyd, Mold, until 12 May. Box office: 01352 701521.
