A new play in Manchester has cut lines about Moors Murderer
Myra Hindley being "a true artist" and a "hero"
for fear of offending the audience.
The 1978 punk film Jubilee has been
adapted for the Royal Exchange theatre.
The film included the lines, but the stage version
removed her name from its script days before Thursday's opening.
Toyah Willcox, who was in the film and is now in the play,
said the lines were "beyond disrespectful"
in the city where Hindley and Ian Brady operated.
The pair's crimes shocked the nation in the 1960s
- they tortured and killed five children between the ages of 10 and 17.
In the film, directed by Derek Jarman, a character named
Amyl Nitrate used her opening speech to say Hindley
"instantly became my hero" when she was 15.
She also said Hindley was a "true artist" because
she knew how to make her desires a reality,
and dismissed those who said her crimes were "unimaginable"
because that showed "the poverty of your imagination".
Travis Alabanza was due to deliver the
lines as Amyl Nitrate in Jubilee
Director Chris Goode, who has adapted the script
for its stage premiere, said the lines were in
the original film to show how punks deliberately
wanted to shock society and smash taboos.
He initially resisted requests to take out the
reference to Hindley but was convinced to do so by a
member of the "senior artistic leadership of the
Royal Exchange" on Saturday.
He said he had underestimated how the
spectre of Hindley still stirred strong feelings,
especially in Manchester, all these years on.
"It seemed to me that if Derek [Jarman] could do that
in 1977 that we must be able to do it 40 years on," he told BBC News.
"I hadn't fully understood the way in which Myra Hindley
as an icon and an idea has sort of become hotter over the
intervening 40 years. That surprised me a little bit."
The London-based director said those outside Manchester
"hear that name in a slightly different way than for people
to whom those crimes and those incidents had a much more
immediate and local weight to them".
'Sensitivity' in Manchester
The film and play are meant to be shocking
- but Goode said he didn't want the rest of the show
to be overshadowed if "everyone's freaking out about a small
piece of material that occurs in the first 10 minutes".
He added: "It's possible we could make a different
decision about this if we were doing this run in London.
"And there will be a run in London, and I expect we'll
have the conversation again. But for now in Manchester
it feels like there's a sensitivity there."
In an interview to be broadcast on BBC Radio 4's PM
programme on Thursday, Toyah said the lines would have
been so offensive they would have "undermined the whole play".
She said there had been discussions among the cast
and creative team for weeks, adding: "We all agreed as a
group who are performing and opening in Manchester,
it was beyond disrespectful."