Jack The Ripper in Fiction - Theatre and Opera

Theatre and Opera

The Ripper features at the end of Frank Wedekind's morality play Die Büchse der Pandora (1904), in which the Ripper murders Lulu, the central character. Lulu is the personification of sinful Lust who meets her comeuppance when she unwittingly flirts with the Ripper. In the original stage production, Wedekind played the part of the Ripper. The play was later adapted into the film Pandora's Box (1928, directed by Georg Wilhelm Pabst), and the opera Lulu (by Alban Berg), both of which also end with the murder of Lulu by the Ripper. It was also made into three films in 1923, 1962 and 1980 respectively, and a play Lulu by Peter Barnes premièred in 1970.

André de Lorde's Jack l'Eventreur was part of the Grand Guignol's output in Paris. Marie Belloc Lowndes' novel and short story The Lodger was adapted for the stage as The Lodger: Who Is He? by Horace Annesley Vachell. In 1917, Lionel Atwill's first role in Broadway theatre was as the title character. Phyllis Tate also based her opera The Lodger, first performed in 1960, on Lowndes' story.

Murder Most Foul by Claude Pirkis was first performed in 1948. The character of the murderer, Dr. Stanley, was taken from The Mystery of Jack the Ripper by Leonard Matters, first published in 1929. Doug Lucie's Force and Hypocrisy is based on the royal conspiracy theory of Stephen Knight.