FringeNYC 2013: The Unfortunates

Review by Pamela Butler · August 20, 2013

The late 19th century in London’s East End was not a safe place for young women plying the trade of prostitution.  Women who for one reason or another fell into desperate situations, were considered “the unfortunates”,  often only able to survive by selling their one valuable asset; their bodies.

This is the setting for the murders attributed to Jack the Ripper. Almost everyone has heard of him and he continues to be the subject of books, movies and ongoing study. Playwright Aoise Stratford has chosen to look into the lives of his victims through the story told here by one of them. Mary Jane Kelly entertains us in an empty tavern, addressing an unseen patron who she hopes to cajole into sampling her feminine bounty in exchange for a little money. We don’t know who he is and we are left only to speculate.

Diana Cherkas as Mary Jane, is quite up to the task, and it is a demanding one.  For an hour and a half, in a lilting Irish accent, she narrates the events of her life and the exchanges she has with friends, lovers, and the police, giving voice to each of them. She is charming and energetic and can speak with excited speed and emotional range.

The set, by David M. Kaplan,  feels like the interior of an old pub, dark and dingy.  Mary Jane is there alone, helping herself to glass after glass of whiskey, dressed in a rough linen skirt and dark bodice right for the period, nicely put together by costumer Julia Sharp . To punctuate and enhance the narrative,  sound designer Greg Scaliera, rings clock bells, probably Big Ben, marking the hours;  echoes the street noise of carriages and crowds outside the pub, and adds a few more specific sounds pertinent to the action.

We get to know Mary Jane pretty well and  come to understand the world she lives in and how she would easily be a prime target for the Ripper.  He went solely after prostitutes and did a rather mean job of killing them and cutting them up.  But if you don’t know the details of his story,  like the names of his victims and their friends, you might be a little lost here. That Mary Jane was an actual victim and not just telling the story of her friend Cath Eddowes, who was a victim, was a little unclear to me.    She describes the grizzly scene laid out at Cath’s inquest, and you do wonder if Mary Jane might be next, or at least at risk of being next.

Diane Cherkas has to cover a lot of ground to recount Mary Jane’s life up to her final walk out the door to meet her fate.  Her story is laced with names and places that  are hard to keep track of if you don’t know the Ripper lore.  I did some checking on the internet to make things a  little clearer. 

I felt the author tries to tell us too much in too short a time for a stage drama, but an hour and a half is also a very long monologue.  Credit to Ms Cherkas for having  committed it all to memory.  Whether or not you are a follower of the mystery of  the brutal Jack and his many victims, you will surely enjoy her remarkable performance.