Reclaiming Henry VIII’s wives from their “divorced, beheaded, died” rhyme made Six a hit musical. Three of that “histo-remix” show’s former queens now unite for this rock opera which aims to flesh out the character of US murder suspect Lizzie Borden beyond the deeds described in the callous quatrain: “Lizzie Borden took an axe, And gave her mother 40 whacks, When she saw what she had done, She gave her father 41.”
Lizzie, which has its origins in a 1990 song cycle, opens and closes with that playground rhyme, and stresses the persistent sensationalism surrounding the crimes of which Borden was acquitted. These days you can stay the night in “America’s most haunted house” where her stepmother and father were found dead on a summer’s day in Massachusetts in 1892. Centre stage, before the show starts, a gleaming axe rotates in a mirrored box. It’s a transfixing image.
Theories abound about who may have killed Andrew and Abby Borden but the musical is in no doubt that it was Lizzie, framing the story not as a whodunnit but a whydunnit. Evan Hunter’s novel Lizzie suggested that her exposed tryst with the housemaid Bridget was the catalyst, a theory also taken up by a 2018 film starring Chloë Sevigny and Kristen Stewart. The show swiftly proposes that the secret romance is instead with a neighbour, Alice, and also foregrounds Lizzie’s abuse at home.
In the title role, Lauren Drew delivers a plaintive yet defiant solo, This Is Not Love, flinching in her chair as if feeling her father’s presence. In the sweet If You Knew, Alice (Maiya Quansah-Breed) expresses her fear at revealing her feelings for Lizzie. Add an indecorous number by the straight-talking Bridget (Mairi Barclay) and the barnstorming arrival of Lizzie’s older sister Emma (Shekinah McFarlane) and the first, almost entirely sung-through half hour grips tightly.
But the polished direction and pop concert choreography from William Whelton of Manchester’s Hope Mill, where the production originated, can’t quite conceal the musical’s uncertain tone. One minute it channels grindhouse cinema and pulp fiction, the next it’s earnest or blandly rattling through the case’s evidence in a level of detail that’s unnecessary as it is not presented as much of a mystery. There is either a tighter, schlocky fringe hour to be filleted from this material or it needs deeper characterisation and commentary in the manner of its most obvious forerunner, Kander and Ebb’s Chicago.
Steven Cheslik-DeMeyer’s score (with additional music and lyrics from Tim Maner and Alan Stevens Hewitt) often has a ferocious hard rock drive, delivered by musical director Honor Halford-MacLeod’s full-pelt band perched above the stage. But Maner’s book is pedestrian, bogged down in exposition, and lacks the attitude and wit of the best lyrics. The four actors have mics secured to their faces yet wear holstered handheld ones too, whipped out effectively during shifts in songs but less so for exaggerated comic asides.
Come for a handful of blistering sequences, four superb voices and Andrew Exeter’s pleasing set design, which has numerous pairs of conspiratorial pigeons beadily eyeing the action.
At Southwark Playhouse Elephant, London, until 2 December. Then at New theatre, Peterborough, 6-16 December.
