Into the minds of monsters

They are women who have committed a crime that's too terrible for many even to contemplate. They have killed children, sometimes their own, sometimes other people's. This is a difficult subject at the best of times, and not one, at first sight, that seems an obvious one for the basis for a play.

Newcastle-based social worker Judith Jones and writer Beatrix Campbell are unapologetic about tackling the issue as a piece of theatre in their first play together, the investigative drama, And All The Children Cried.

Jones points out the precedents for what they've done, including the work of Shakespeare and Sophocles. "The theatre has dealt with such subjects for hundreds and hundreds of years. It's dealt with death, destruction, abuse. So, when we thought about it, it seemed the obvious place," she says.

Campbell, who lives in Byker, adds: "It's a way into themes that we're all fascinated by, that we read about in the newspapers. They are things that perhaps we may not want to see or hear.

"By doing this through theatre what we get is something that's a more complicated, more nuanced, more searching and a more profound interrogation of these themes than, we feel, typically happens."

They have brought to the script 25 years experience of researching and managing the impact of sex and violence on both victims and perpetrators.

The play focuses on the stories of two women in prison for crimes of killing children. One, Myra, is based on the case of Myra Hindley. The other, Gail, is based on many cases researched by the authors over a number of years. Both are awaiting a meeting of the parole board.

Using someone so readily identifiable to the public as Moors Murderer Hindley - sentenced, with Ian Brady, to life imprisonment for murder in 1966 - might seem to be clouding the issue and designed to provoke controversy. The writers think otherwise.

"We were interested in exploring women who kill their own children, and that naturally evolved into women who kill other people's children. Then it seemed to duck the issues not to deal with the most notorious woman in the world," says Jones.

"We could have called her Brenda and have her killing children in Devon, but didn't. We have created a fiction out of what was already in the public domain."

She and Campbell worked together previously on Listen To The Children, an award-winning documentary about the sadistic abuse of children.

Jones, who trained as a social worker in the 1970s, lectures widely both in this country and abroad. She has recently been invited to be an honorary fellow at the child and woman abuse studies unit at the University of North London. Writer and journalist Campbell, a visiting professor at Newcastle University, has written books about the Cleveland child abuse case and Tyneside riots, as well as political and social issues.

It was a stage version of her book about the riots, Goliath - Britain's Dangerous Place - that led to the new play. Director Annie Castledine began talking to them about a project written directly for the theatre. West Yorkshire Playhouse artistic director Jude Kelly gave them the chance to develop ideas in workshops at the Leeds theatre.

"We explored themes that we'd dealt with in our different professions, but they were complicated and difficult to represent," explains Jones.

"As the complexities of the riots book had worked well on the stage, we wanted to look at areas about violence and child abuse on stage. We had a whole range of issues and decided to see how they worked theatrically."

The two have continued to work on the play over the past few years, in between doing their "day jobs".

The subject of women who do terrible things to children is a difficult one, Jones acknowledges, but one they felt they should explore. They were very definite on their approach. "It would have been easy to have some kind of noble, feisty woman who was fighting against all the odds to do the right thing," she says.

'We felt we didn't want to do that. We wanted to look at the issue of women who kill children," she says. "In the research and talking to people, we found so many variables about why women do these things. We decided to deal with two women in prison who'd done these terrible things but were from different routes."

The play has Sharon Maughan, the actress best known from the Gold Blend ads, as Myra, with Gillian Wright as Gail. Film sequences are used to represent their inner life.

Although based in fact, Campbell describes it as "a fictional take on the journey that's taken these women to that dreadful place". They've had no direct contact with Hindley or other child killers while researching the piece.

Anticipating the effect it might have on audiences, each performance will be followed by open forums offering a chance to discuss issues raised with experts on the prison service, women in prison, psychotherapy and child welfare.

Those confirmed to take part in speaker discussions include Anne Owers, HM Chief Inspector of Prisons, and John Woods, principal child and adolescent psychotherapist at the Portman Clinic.

Getting into the mind of child killers wasn't easy. Although dealing with familiar themes, the main difficulty for Campbell was putting words into the mouths of these women. "I found that a very demanding and almost dangerous exercise, and much more difficult than Judith did," she says.

"As a journalist, you have an easy distance from those issues and sometimes, when you get up close, it's very searing.

"This is the subject of Judith's working life. If you do that work as social workers and therapists, there's the discipline of saving yourself to be more practical."

Jones talks of the dilemma of attempting to think like a child killer, imagining emotions and descriptions that most people avoid. "If you're writing words for a character to speak, in that process you have to try to inhabit them as human beings. Here, you are trying to be a woman who has killed children as a human being rather than a monster, although she may do monstrous things. It's quite a challenge."

Campbell emphasises that the production is very much an ensemble piece with writers, actors and director working together to create the play. "You wouldn't want to do this unless you're all committed to the idea that it wanted doing," she adds.

* And All The Children Cried is in the Quarry Theatre at West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds, until May 11. The production is considered unsuitable for anyone under 15. Discussions with the creative team and guest speakers follow each performance. Tickets 0113-213 7700.