Alani Kravitz (Lizzie) belts out a number from LIZZIE: THE MUSICAL as Karen Lange (Bridget) provides backing vocals (Ryan Maxwell)
Lizzie Borden took an axe and gave her mother forty whacks.
When she saw what she had done, she gave her father forty-one.
The story behind that popular rhyme took place more than 120 years ago, but continues to inspire books, fan fiction, podcasts, movies, and plays—including a macabre musical that opens in D.C. just in time for Friday the 13th.
Created by Steven Cheslik-DeMeyer, Tim Maner, and Alan Stevens Hewitt, Lizzie: The Musical is based on the so-called “trial of the century” two centuries ago. In August 1892, someone brutally murdered Andrew Borden and his second wife Abby in their Fall River, MA home. Police, the press, and the public soon turned their attention to Mr. Borden’s younger daughter Lizzie, who discovered the gruesome scene.
Lizzie Borden was tried and acquitted for the ghastly crime, which remains unsolved. The case maintains a serious cult following and theories abound as to what actually happened. Lizzie: The Musical makes the argument that 32-year-old Borden did it.
Marie Sproul directs this Pinky Swear Productions show, which she says is not particularly concerned with what “really” happened. The all-woman musical borrows from transcripts of the trial and includes details from the case, like the pears Borden was allegedly eating in the barn loft on that fateful August day—a juicy distraction from the carnage occurring inside her father’s house.
The characters are all based on real people, but their personalities, relationships with each other, and roles in the murders are pure conjecture and speculation. “What we’re left with is the story of four women in Victorian time who really have no voice,” Sproul says, “and each one of them takes this journey of finding freedom—in a ghoulish way, yes. But in a way Lizzie becomes all of their heroes because she kind of frees them from the patriarchy in this instance, which is her father, and the stepmom who’s holding them back.
At their first rehearsal together, the cast and creative team gushed over the show and the research that went into writing it. They commiserated over details they’d learned in their research—with the help of dramaturge Maegan Clearwood and her handy Google Drive, a multi-folder resource including Borden family photos, a floor plan of their house, a guide to the murder case, and scholarly articles.
They chatted about the incompetent Fall River police and Borden’s admission to her friend Alice Russell the night before the murders that she sleeps with “one eye open half the time.” They discussed how childhood trauma can bury itself deep in a victim’s subconscious, not manifesting until years later.
Alani Kravitz (Ryan Maxwell)
For Allyson Harkey, who plays Alice, the show presented a unique challenge in building her character. “We don’t have anything of her except like one photograph and testimony,” she says. That testimony includes Russell’s admission to police that she saw Borden burning a dress after the murders. To Harkey, Alice is a moral person who refuses to tell a lie, even if the truth comes at great cost. In Lizzie: The Musical, Alice and Lizzie are romantically involved. In coming clean to police, Alice sells out her lover and friend.
“I feel like she’s really the person we all hope we might be in this situation, that we might give up something really hard to sacrifice for what we think is right,” Harkey says.
Morality is relative and Lizzie’s evil acts are justified in this narrative, which paints her as an abuse survivor. Alani Kravitz plays Lizzie and says her character’s story is one of “captivity to freedom.”
“I think there’s a lot of sadness in her and a lot of rage that turns into fire,” she says. “In the second act, she comes alive when she kills them because she’s famous; she’s notorious; she’s in all the papers. She becomes somebody when she commits this murder and I don’t think it’s what she expected, but I think she’s happy that it happened.”
Kravitz says she hopes the outcome will leave audience members happy too, albeit perhaps a bit confused. “It is an anthem of freedom and I want them to be a little bit scared by how happy this makes them,” she says.
The score and libretto might also surprise theatergoers. Blending rock, pop, indie, metal, and punk, the musical provides high-energy entertainment with some pretty dark lyrics. In “The Fall Of The House Of Borden,” Karen Lange (Bridget) sings, “It’s a butcher shop in the house of Borden…splattered brains on everything, except for Lizzie’s dress.”
The show’s aesthetic is supported by Katie McCreary’s lighting design and Liz Gossens’s edgy Victorian-inspired costumes, with heeled lace-up boots, corsets and fishnet stockings. Music Director Piero Bonamico says Lizzie is “a marathon of a show.” “It’s a challenge for the singers because you think that it’s a musical,” he says.”But really it’s a rock concert.”
Lizzie: The Musical runs January 12th through February 5th at Anacostia Playhouse. Buy tickets here.
