Lizzie, The Musical

Or: Somebody Will Die (And we’re all fine with that)

I do like a Good For Her story done well. Lizzie Borden (Cami Nicols), subject of playground rhymes, progenitor of True Crime speculations, and eponymous heroine of the punk rock musical, certainly earns her spurs. In discussing the likely events of the August 1893, as related by her quarrelsome sister Emma (Megan Nightingale), witchy housekeeper Bridget (Whitney Ulmen), neighbor and “close friend” Alice (Rachel Hart), and Lizzie herself, the case becomes less of a whodunit, or a howtheygonnadoit, but more of a rock-fest of watering the tree of liberty with the blood of tyrants.

With the band onstage, bopping along to the hair-raising screeches and bone humming beats, our four narrators walk us through the horrors of the house of Borden, which began long before anybody picked up an ax. We get not one but two horrifically beautiful depictions of the abuse (physical, mental, sexual, you’ve been warned, dear reader) that Lizzie suffers night after night, with Nicols dead-eyed and hollow. The one joy of her life is the visits by Alice who waits, pining neath a pear tree, longing for the day that Lizzie will finally come out and taste her … pears.

The musical builds as it goes along. In “If You Knew,” with Hart lending her rich and melodious voice to the trailing questions of the first of several pear related songs, or Ulmen and Nicols mesmerizingly melodical discussion of poisons in “Shattercane and Velvet Grass,” but each remains a set piece. The play flows in and out of the wings, behind closed doors in a dynamic empty stage style but can get tripped up by its peculiar choreography. All that changes in the Act I closer “Somebody Will Do Something!” which brought the audience from a polite and respectful silence to a full throated mob calling out for blood.

This zero to sixty interest in vigilante justice sustains through the second act (with Nightingale providing much needed comic relief through Emma’s bellicose bearing). My favorite is the sister’s sweet (and hypocritical) hymn, “Watchman for the Morning,” but everything sweeps us along to the triumphant ending with Justice justly served (for who, though, you’ll to see the play). In time we’ve seen Nicols fill herself up with resolve (and pears), cracking out of her prison to become a proud, belting heroine on the stand of her trial and history.

 It’s a wild ride on a tide of studded leather, but the ending has none of the thin blooded ambiguity, and sometimes, in the comfort of the theater, its nice to know that in the face of trouble some people can pick up the ax and get things done. Good for her.