A Jack the Ripper pantomime in Norwich is facing calls to close down for ‘turning violence against women into a joke’.

‘Jack the Ripper the panto’ is an adult show due to run at the Norwich Playhouse next weekend and describes itself as a “politically incorrect comedy” that is not for “children, or, for that matter, the easily offended, or basically anyone who doesn’t think the idea of a pantomime about Jack the Ripper is big, clever or funny!”

But more than 500 people have signed a Change.org petition calling for the Spooky Kid Productions show to be banned.

Sophie Elliott Credit: Sophie Elliott/change.org

Sophie Elliott, 23, who started the campaign, wrote: “We, the undersigned, are fed up with watching the very real risks and challenges that come with being a woman being turned into a joke.

“As much as Spooky Kid Productions wishes to pride itself on alternative and adult entertainment, what they have actually done is created a show which makes a mockery of violence against sex workers, violence against women – and vilifies those who perpetuate those things.

“Just by laughing at a joke that is about rape or is derogatory towards women, the audience are participating in rape culture.”

She told Telegraph Women: "I know the pantomime doesn't focus on the victims of Jack the Ripper but that's almost worse.

"It's making light of violence against women and we seem to be going through a bit of a Jack the Ripper obsession at the moment. It's important to take a feminist stand against it."

The description of the play on the theatre's website

She called for the theatre to stop selling tickets and not allow the panto to be performed on its premises.

"Do not perpetuate rape culture more than it already is within our society. Do not desecrate the memories of the real-life victims of Jack the Ripper by turning him into the good-guy protagonist of a sexist and misogynistic stage show," she said.

Caroline Richardson, Norwich Playhouse director, told the Eastern Daily Press: “We think very carefully about the shows we programme here, and the comedy in Jack the Ripper the Panto may be not to everyone’s taste, but we would like to reassure the people who are worried that violence against women is not the butt of the joke, although obviously as it is a show about a murderer, murder will feature.”

"Do not desecrate the memories of the real-life victims of Jack the Ripper by turning him into the good-guy protagonist of a sexist and misogynistic stage show." Sophie Elliott

A statement from production company Spooky Kid Productions said: “Jack The Ripper The Panto categorically does not make a mockery of violence against sex workers and women, or participate in rape culture.

“We have performed the show in Norwich several times at two other theatres, to over 1,600 people from a broad range of backgrounds, and we have never had any complaints about the content of the panto.”

The furore comes months after a controversial Jack the Ripper museum opened in London's Whitechapel, near where the original murders took place.

The Jack the Ripper Museum in Whitechapel Credit: Alamy Live News

Initially proposed as a new ‘Museum of Women’s History’, the London Ripper museum was met with protests and anger when it launched earlier this year.

Campaigners accused it of celebrating violence against women.

Historian Fern Riddell visited the museum and wrote in a Telegraph Women article: "The Jack the Ripper Museum is a badly done attraction, with little regard for the lives of the women it supposedly portrays.

"Other than a few sides of paper and a glass case of bonnets, there is nothing to tell you about who these women were, and how they lived.

"Their violent murders aren’t set in context and come over as nameless violence inflicted on nameless women. This so-called museum is profiting solely from the victimisation of women, and contains no new or up-to-date research."