'Lizzie': Great voices, great theme, needs cutting
Lizzie Borden took an axe, and with it she smashed the patriarchy. Or at least that's the idea presented by 11th Hour Theatre Company's production of Steven Cheslik-Demeyer, Tim Maner, and Alan Stevens Hewitt's Lizzie, a bare-bones (no pun intended), eardrum-rattling musical about the best-known citizen of Fall River, Mass.
The show's set and lighting design, by Thom Weaver, takes its cues from concert stages and maybe a little bit from another musical, Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, with risers for the band (Dan Kazemi is the six-piece onstage rock band's musical director) and performers, and lighting that alternates between reds and whites. The stage's only adornments are roadie trunks, the suggestion of a kitchen counter, and a hanging backdrop with a black damask pattern that could be mistaken for hanging bats (the mammals, not the bludgeoning instruments).
This murder business is, predictably, a goth-rock affair. The cast — Alex Keiper's Lizzie, older sister Emma (Cara Noel Antosca), housemaid Bridget Sullivan (Rachel Brennan), and girl-next-door Alice Russell (Meredith Beck) — caterwaul their tale of woe while clad in costumer Kayla Speedy's Victorian-styled fetish gear: a mutton-sleeved shrug over a bustier, fishnet stockings beneath a hiked-up petticoat. The color scheme is sickly yellow, bloodred, black, and blue.
Director Kate Galvin leans heavy on the show's first-act melodrama. Cleaved neatly into the time before and after her stepmother's and father's murders, the play posits that aside from the sisters' fear that their stepmother was a gold-digger, Andrew Borden regularly molested his younger daughter, and he may have caught her in a lesbian entanglement with the neighbor. They're probably on to something; Lizzie was 32 at the time of the killings, and by all accounts, Andrew was a hard man who kept his daughters tightly confined.
In Act 1, Keiper, mike in hand, blows the roof off the room with her powerful vocals, but the cast doesn't have much space to stretch out emotionally. It's all doom and gloom until Act 2, in which Lizzie revels in her newfound freedom, while the other women (mostly) circle the wagons to protect her. This second act is a lot more fun, and it takes on a real Dresden Dolls-meets-My Chemical Romance-meets-Bikini Kill sensibility, and if not everyone's voice is up to the high-decibel task, well, neither was Courtney Love's, but it didn't slow her any.
Lizzie does, however, falter in its ultimate goal to present itself as an unqualified feminist redemption tale. Though it gives its title character a fairly defensible motive, Lizzie's scars still run deep, even after she murders her tormentor; maybe especially then. And what of her stepmother? As one of the House of Borden's women, doesn't she deserve at least a little consideration? Ultimately, Lizzie, the woman, so powerfully performed by Keiper, is robbed of her humanity and turned back into an icon.
Don't get me wrong: This is an unusual and strangely affecting production. However, although Lizzie gets close, it'll take 40 whacks by another playwright to really cut to the heart of our ongoing, century-plus fascination with Ms. Borden.
Lizzie. Through Jan. 29 at 11th Hour Theatre Company, 2329 S. Third St. Tickets: $36-$40. Information: 267-987-9865 or www.11thhourtheatrecompany.org/