On an August morning in 1892, Andrew and Abby Borden were killed on separate floors of their Fall River, Massachusetts, home. Each had received several violent hatchet blows to the head. Law enforcement immediately identified a handful of suspects and potential accomplices in the gory crime, but ultimately it was the wealthy married couple's youngest daughter, Lizzie, who was tried — and later acquitted — for their murders.
The jury of 12 balding, bewhiskered men might not have felt that the evidence against Lizzie was airtight, but public opinion and folk legend generally hold that she's the one who delivered the skull-splitting blows. There's a catchy, old skipping-rope rhyme that gleefully recounts how Lizzie gave Abby 40 whacks, Andrew 41.
So, assuming Lizzie indeed wielded the deadly hatchet, what would provoke such a violent act? Was it insanity? Indignation? Rage? Greed?
The rock musical Lizzie, created by Steven Cheslik-DeMeyer, Alan Stevens Hewitt and Tim Maner around 2010, explores some of those motivations by drawing on historical records and the ample corpus of speculative history on the Borden murders. For years there were strict directives about how Lizzie could be staged, effectively limiting new productions to clones of the original. But those rules relaxed very recently, which has made Lizzie a prime candidate for revivals both big and small.
Locally, it's Bright Comet Theatre that's now handing Lizzie her ax. Following its debut back in February with an all-femme Lord of the Flies, the ascendant theater group is launching a local two-week, four-performance run of the musical on July 28.
Lizzie might only be their second production, but it's one that the show's director, Dominique Betts, has been hoping to stage for close to a decade.
"The album had just dropped in 2013 when I was 15 or 16 years old, and I looked into it. I was like, 'Lizzie Borden? There's a musical?' And I listened to it and fell in love with it. It became my favorite musical. Throughout the past 10 years, I've been showing it to everyone I can," she says.
To secure performance rights, Betts appealed directly to the show's creators. They informed her of the recent change in licensing arrangements, likely a savvy response to current trends in musical theater. Betts notes that Lizzie is the "foundation for shows like SIX," the British-born hit musical about the wives of Henry VIII, who, like the Borden parents, also met with grim ends. (SIX comes for Spokane's Best of Broadway series in January 2024.) Although both musicals use rock-based music to tell their stories, Lizzie is far more earnest.
"We didn't want to do the 'SIX-ificiation' with this one," Betts says. "SIX is fun, and it's a concert based off historical events, but it's a little more light when it comes to the material. You can't do that to this one and do it justice."
For this production of Lizzie, Betts is looking to emphasize its intimacy. Some of that is achieved naturally through the show's standard cast of just four actors. Here, that's Elizabeth Theriault (as Lizzie), Skyler Moeder (older sister Emma), Dana Sammond (live-in maid Bridget Sullivan) and Keva Shull (close friend Alice Russell). But the performance space at M.A.D. Co. Lab Studios will also put the audience closer to the action — which, in some cases, could result in some spatters of stage blood.
"The staging of Lizzie is normally really broad, and it's almost like a rock concert. There are aspects of that in our staging, but we're focused on the human side of everything," Betts says.
"We're doing the first act in traditional 1892 clothing and then going full tilt into this goth fantasy for the second act to symbolize that [Lizzie's] free now and she gets to express herself in ways that she never thought she would."
As the title character, Theriault is savoring the opportunity to play a historical, fact-based figure.
"It gives you a great wealth to draw upon as an actor. There's so much there that I don't need to go off into some fringe territory. It's all right there. She and her sister were held captive by their father, who would lock the doors. He was a very cheap, frugal man who refused to spend his money on his daughters. It gives me a great jumping-off point," she says.
Along with its roots in the historical record, Lizzie also tells its story through a rock- and punk-style songbook. Through songs like "Burn the Whole Thing Up" and "Mercury Rising," the cast harmonizes their way toward creating some understanding of why the lead might have felt compelled to swing the hatchet.
"Whether or not she admitted to doing it, or whether or not she knew more about what happened, she spent the rest of her life maybe not atoning for what she'd done, but trying to make things better for people. She was a huge philanthropist," Betts says.
"It's not necessarily like [Lizzie] is saying she was right for doing it," Theriault adds. "But, then again, was she right for doing it?" ♦
Lizzie • July 28-Aug. 5; Fri-Sat at 7:30 pm • $20 • M.A.D Co. Lab Studios • 3038 E. Trent Ave., Suite 213 • brightcomettheatre.com • 509-638-6340
