Lullabies of Broadmoor

★★★★ Four Stars, What’s On in London

Two plays, three murderers! Murder at the Finborough, and this time, it’s local…

Lullabies of Broadmoor weaves the stories of three notorious London murders into a picture of life in the “Gentlemen’s Block”, a wing of Broadmoor reserved for murderers who regarded themselves as a cut above the average killer.

The Murder Club is set in 1922. Murder is in the air. The British Government is engaged in a genocidal war in Iraq using poison gas and other weapons of mass destruction and two notorious murderers are meeting in Broadmoor for the first time. Small time conman Ronald True murdered the prostitute Olive Young at number 13 Finborough Road, just down the street from the theatre. Embittered out of work actor Richard Prince murdered matinee idol William Terriss at the stage door of the Adelphi Theatre. Now the two men have been put in charge of an evening of entertainment at Broadmoor. Propaganda and reality, fact and fiction, real life and theatre, madness and sanity. The lines all shift uneasily in this psychological thriller. Presented with the support of The Friends of Brompton Cemetery across the road from the theatre where William Terriss lies buried, The Murder Club has been specially commissioned for the Finborough Theatre to tell the infamous history of the local area…

Wilderness, also based on a true story, describes a journey from the battlefields of the American Civil War to the cells of nineteenth century Broadmoor by way of one of the most famous murders in Victorian Lambeth. This is the story of William Chester Minor, one time surgeon in the American Union Army and a major contributor to the Oxford English Dictionary. A rich, dark, Gothic tragicomedy about war, murder, madness and redemption. Strong language and sexual content mean this production is not suitable for children.