A gripping and poignant tale of 1960s East End crime is coming to stage this summer.
Where Do Little Birds Go is a one-woman show through the eyes of a young nightclub hostess, Lucy Fuller.
It is based on the true story of her real-life counterpart Lisa Prescott, who was held over four days in an East Ham flat by notorious gangsters, the Kray twins.
Her role was to be a sex slave for an escaped convict, Frank “The Mad Axeman” Mitchell.
Playwright Camilla Whitehill was originally inspired by the dearth of information on this young girl despite her ordeal.
She said: “I’m quite interested in crimes and I was reading about the Kray twins. There aren’t that many women mentioned so you assume there aren’t many involved.
“But I read about this particular story and even in the books the focus isn’t on her at all.”
Camilla set out to give Lisa a voice by reimagining her past and future around this event, filling out the gaps instead of making her another throwaway female victim.
She said: “I saw the character quite clearly but I think the difficult part was telling the story in a way that’s compelling but also had responsibility to what happened to her, and to draw parallels to the treatment of women today.”
Despite the serious subject nature of the play, audiences will be entertained by dancing and music which evokes the swinging sixties.
Camilla said: “I think it’s quite evocative and I hope the audience will feel they have been drawn into that time. It’s lively and has funny points but overall it is quite an intense experience.”
She added that the play would particularly be important to a London audience who is used to history’s glamorisation of gangsters like the Krays.
She said: “People talk about them with this misty-eyed look but they were incredibly violent men who abused people and tortured this woman by locking her away with a schizophrenic man.
“I just want people to remember this woman – as history has forgotten her.”
The play runs from August 11 at Camden People’s Theatre in Hampstead Road.
TIckets cost £10 and can be booked at cptheatre.co.uk
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