The tragic story of James Bulger is explored on the London stage

Written by award-winning Swedish playwright Niklas Radstrom and taking its title from the reactionary response of the tabloid press, Monsters, a co-production with Strawberry Vale Productions, which opened at the Arcola in Dalston yesterday, is a play based on facts featuring the voices of those involved.

Director Christopher Haydon tells me: “When I first read the play, I was really struck by how sophisticated its dealing of this difficult issue was. As a piece of writing there are some details that are difficult to read and to listen to because it’s an horrendous event, but I really felt the whole tone was very respectful, very calm and struck a different chord to the kind of hysteria that you got in parts of the press.”

Devised as a “modern play written in the style of a Greek tragedy”, the piece features just four actors who will step into different roles and different times (no actors play the children) and use various theatrical techniques, from monologues and choral sequences, to literally having scripts in hand for the scenes where Robert and Jon are interviewed by the police.

“One of the points of that,” the 29-year-old director explains, “is to draw attention to how stories are made, how they are constructed and how we understand them as an audience.”

Referring, of course, to how the press took ownership of the James Bulger story, even renaming the toddler Jamie for dramatic effect, Monsters, which has been generously supported by the Anglo-Swedish Literary Foundation, seeks to ask the questions that Christopher claims certain media outlets failed to.

Cambridge-graduate Christopher, who is an award-winning journalist, adds: “I hope the play sparks wider discussions about questions that the case raises. The nature of whether there is such a thing of evil and what that word means, questions surrounding grief, surrounding witness, and what does it mean that there were 38 adults who saw these two boys taking this child away and what does it mean that they didn’t intervene. Do they hold some of the blame or not? Nobody expects children to kill children, do we really have a right to blame them as adults?”

Inevitably, the work has already attracted criticism with calls of “bad taste” from the Mothers Against Murder and Aggression. So what is Christopher’s response to this backlash?

“I absolutely do not want to make any judgement about Lyn Costello (MAMA),” he says, “but my guess is that she hasn’t read the play and I can completely understand why somebody would instinctly think that it’s wrong and you shouldn’t do a play about it. But everything in the play has already been on public record, everything has already been in the newspapers time and time again, nothing is new, so my question is, if it’s OK for the newspapers to publish this material and talk about it, why isn’t it OK for the theatre to do it?”

Niklas Radstrom initially wrote Monsters for a Danish theatre, and nobody involved in the Bulger case was interviewed for the play, however aware of the controversy it could attract, the Arcola team did think long and hard about whether or not to get in touch with James’ mother Denise Fergus.

Producer Lilli Geissendorfer tells me: “We thought it would be almost exploitative to go back, we thought what do we say? We have got exclusive permission or endorsement of some sort? The whole idea once we had thought about it and tried to understand what that would mean was deeply, deeply, suspect.”

Speaking at such a fast pace it’s hard to keep up, Christopher adds: “Our aim is not to stir up controversy, we have been very careful in terms of the way we have allowed it to be given coverage in the press, we don’t want to give the press outrageous quotes, that would be profoundly upsetting for everyone involved, but it’s a serious issue that needs talking about.”

Monsters runs at the Arcola Theatre until Saturday, May 30. Tickets: 020 7503 1646 or www.arcolatheatre.com (£10-£16 plus a limited number of free tickets for under 26s)