Ruth Ellis
Female · The Lead
- Playing Age: Mid-20s to Mid-30s
- Stage presence: 14 of 17 scenes
- Lines / (Words): 510 / (3357)
Ruth Ellis is the emotional heart of the play: a real historical
figure and the last woman to be hanged in Britain. She is
poised, witty and unflinching, but the mask slips as the story
moves through her violent marriage, miscarriages, drinking,
obsessive passion for David Blakely and the devastating final
reckoning at Holloway Prison. The actor must move between brittle
glamour, drunken disintegration and an eerie, accepting calm —
often within a single scene. Ruth's voice is a carefully cultivated
“telephone voice” over working-class roots, and her performance
should contrast both public composure and private fracture. Ruth's
role requires a performer who can move between confidence and
desperation, seduction and self-protection, wit and grief with
absolute control.
Gale
Male · Detective Inspector
- Playing Age: 40 - 60
- Stage presence: 16 of 17 scenes
- Lines / (Words): 206 / (1979)
Gale is the play's detective and narrator: a fictional
composite who opens the investigation over whisky and Billie
Holiday and never lets it go. He is military-sharp, jazz-haunted
and increasingly dishevelled as the case consumes him. He moves
from procedural sparring to something tender and unresolvable.
He is the last person to talk honestly with Ruth. The role requires an
actor with effortless authority, a love of language and the
discipline to watch without pulling focus. Gale is the
audience's guide, the investigator, the narrator and the man
whose moral unease gives the story its emotional depth.
Sylvia Shaw
Female · Club Manageress
- Playing Age: 40 - 65
- Stage presence: 9 of 17 scenes
- Lines / (Words): 342 / (2125)
Sylvia Shaw is the doyenne of the London club scene: manageress
of The Court Club and a fictional composite who has seen
everything and survived it. She runs the club, hires the girls,
teaches them the rules of the game and warns them against love.
Her voice is dry, flinty and working-class London, with
music-hall comic timing and a blade underneath. The part needs
an actor who can land a laugh on a half-line and then silence
the room. Sylvia is hard on Ruth precisely because she gave Ruth
her chance, and her prison-visit thaw is one of the play's most
affecting moments. She is part observer, part strategist and
part witness to the emotional damage that the world around Ruth
has quietly created.
Doris Judd
Female · Charlady / Conscience
- Playing Age: 20 - 35
- Stage presence: 9 of 17 scenes
- Lines / (Words): 294 / (1757)
Doris Judd is the moral centre of the play and its conscience. A
hard-working char who dreams of marriage, savings and a place of
her own, she is engaged to Albert and later loses him because
she will not abandon Ruth. She is the only character who
challenges everyone: Sylvia's hardness, Vickie's gossip and,
above all, Ruth's self-destruction. Her devotion is never
servile; it has a spine. The actor needs warmth, comic precision
and the ability to break an audience's heart very quietly. She
brings brandy, blankets, a sewing kit and a copied-out poem, and
her scenes are often the quietest but most devastating in the
play.
Vickie Martin
Female · Hostess / Rival
- Playing Age: 20 - 30
- Stage presence: 4 scenes + Act 2 courtroom sequence
- Lines / (Words): 223 / (1494)
Vickie Martin arrives out of the smog with a suitcase and a
heart-stopping smile, and ambition enough to power the West End.
Based on a real person, she is Ruth's mirror and dearest rival,
the friend who dances with her, teases her and tells her the
truth about David Blakely. Her voice is quicksilver, confident
and infectious; her stage presence burns bright rather than
long. The sparkle must be irresistible, but the actor must let
just enough fragility glint through it. She is funny, compelling
and dangerous in equal measure, and her scenes often carry the
most immediate tension because she is never entirely in control
of what she feels.
