★★★★☆

Review by John Gibson. Assembly Roxy – Upstairs. Venue 139.

The Lizzie Borden case is a well-known (although apparently not to this audience) horror trope involving a bloody chapter of Massachusetts’ past. Like playwright Justin Elizabeth Sayre, I too had seen the mini-series and was aware of the issues of gender and patriarchy within the murders. I approached the play with a curiosity as to how Sayre would balance camp and bawdy with historic inequity.

The events are presented through flashback as Lottie (Lauren Lopez) is on trial for the murders of her parents. This sets up the adversarial nature of the story as her inquisition begins, the tone is set as the lawyers exemplify the most caricatured aspects of toxic masculinity and dick jokes pepper the script.

The source of the tension that led to the tragedy is revealed as being Lottie’s hilariously physical obsession with her father (Ryan W. Garcia, fresh from Jordan Peele’s Nope), and his second wife’s (Sayre) hold over his libido. Essentially, Lottie really loves daddy (in an explicitly sexual way) and Lopez has great fun showing us all the ways she can, with entreaties of ‘look how flexible I am daddy!’. The appreciative audience will love the perverse pantomime but Sayre saves the best characterisation for Tom Lenk.

Despite doing double duty, Sayre is excellent as Barfa; the disgustingly base and debauched surrogate mother that Lottie’s dad can’t resist. Scheming with her dad to get rid of brother and sister, Sayre’s script flirts with the notion that this may have been catalyst for the events to follow. Not satisfied with only one explanation, Sayre further suggests a more domestic reason for the slaughter in the form of the also excellent Tom Detrinis’ downtrodden and oppressed Irish maid.

All the performances are excellent, with Lopez’s clowning a particular highlight, but the way Jessica Hanna has presented the colourful visuals in the story is both clever and interesting. This is supported by excellent technical work which makes what could have been a dry retelling of history (with added porn) vivid and fun.