Girl power, fight sequences fuel Kill the Ripper, at the Rio
The Geekenders’ latest is a Victorian-era revenge fantasy
Kill the Ripper. Photo by Chelsey Stuyt Photography
Kill the Ripper by the Geekenders takes place at the Rio Theatre July 7 to 9 and 14 to 16
A COMBINATION OF dance, violence, glamour, humour, clown, and girl power: that’s how the Geekenders’ Fairlith Harvey describes Kill the Ripper. The new female-led Victorian-era revenge fantasy tells the story of three working women in Whitechapel, England, at the peak of Jack the Ripper’s infamous 1888 murder spree. It also features fight sequences designed by Affair of Honor, a physical-theatre company specializing in stage combat.
Why revenge fantasy? “I want to see female characters that have just had enough (like me and all my friends), but that also have the ability, courage, and resourcefulness to save themselves from becoming a footnote in the story of some horrible asshole with a knife,” Harvey says. “I want to see empowering media about a world that isn’t. I want to see plays, movies, and television shows about the heroes I needed as a kid and young woman; I have to create the role models I could have benefitted from. I want to see women triumphant, women making bold and healthy choices even when it’s hard, lesbians surviving and living happily ever after, and more than anything I want to see serial killers not mattering to anyone anymore. I want to see the men that have purposely harmed me when I was young and vulnerable get their metaphorical comeuppance. The power women have in this world isn’t what it should be, even though it’s 2022… But I’m not going to give up. And no one I know is, either. Women deserve better than to see themselves in media as cannon fodder.
“And revenge is so satisfying,” she adds. “Joking about your own oppression is, too. This show has plenty of both.”
To get the physicality just right, Harvey turned to Affair of Honor’s Jackie Hanlin and Nathania Bernabe, who are joined on-stage by Katrina Tietz and Ben Francis.
“Their [Affair of Honor’s] work has an ineffable quality, a combination of dance and violence that is always charged with high stakes, inventive ideas, and real empowerment; what these women are creating in front of your eyes is real,” Harvey says. “There are no special effects like you’d have in a movie, just athleticism, wildness, and passion that allows me to believe the violence is real, the stakes are real, and that the characters are in real danger. Their work makes everything feel dangerous, eerie, and disturbing.
“The fight scenes grow in intensity as the show goes on, and they start with some really satisfying sequences,” she says. “By the time we get to the sequence foretold in the play’s title, the lights have gone full horror rainbow fantasy and the violence itself is bloodthirsty, immediate, and powerful.”
Harvey adds that she finds the Victorian era fascinating. “I’m always tickled by how slutty the Victorians were while navigating the maze of social decorum and maintaining the appearance of lacking sexuality,” she says. “Gaslight is sexy and mysterious. 1888 is so long ago that you can almost tell yourself that history is just a story, but that’s how history ends up repeating itself; 1888 happened. It wasn’t that long ago, in the scheme of things."
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