BINGLEY Little Theatre has turned to a dark chapter of crime history for its latest production.

It is 60 years since Ruth Ellis was hanged for the murder of her lover, David Blakely. The Thrill of Love is a powerful play which examines both the personal factors at work in the life of the last woman in England to suffer the death penalty and the social background to her crime and punishment.

The play is by young playwright Amanda Whittington has produced a series of powerful dramas about the lives of women. "The way in which Ellis’s fate unfolded was very much of its time; she lived much of her life in that 1950s demi-monde where a complacent social elite and a ‘service class’ of pimps and prostitutes mingled, out of the eye of the general public," says director Paul Chewins. "But what Amanda Whittington’s play seeks to do is to lay bare the forces at work in Ellis’s private life which, if they don’t excuse her crime, account for it in a way that makes the audience temper judgement with pity. The case of Ruth Ellis threw open a a window on the hypocrisy of a particular level of English society. Through that same window, just a few years later, the public was able to view the notorious Profumo affair."

Paul Chewins is well known to local audiences as both a actor and director. Playing Ruth Ellis is Emma Jane Fearnley, and Caroline Auty plays Ruth’s friend, Vickie Martin. Completing the cast are Jill Whitehouse, Liz Hall and, taking the sole male part, Anthony Morton as the detective, Jack Gale, whose preoccupation with why Ellis committed the crime to which she readily confessed is a thread throughout the play.

"This is a fascinating drama that raises questions on many levels; about capital punishment; about how politicians and the legal profession view right and wrong, about the messiness and sadness of human relationships and, above all, about the lives of women," adds Paul. "Nobody seeing the play can avoid the sense that, while Ruth Ellis pulled the trigger, it was the men in her life who called the shots."

* The Thrill of Love runs at Bingley Arts Centre from March 2 - 7. For tickets call (01274) 567983.