Blood Relations

Reviewed by Pauline Adamek

Writer-director Sharon Pollock’s sluggish two-hour, two-act play attempts to dramatize the mystery of the Lizzie Borden murders with a puzzle-like plot, but her convoluted approach and inept staging simply make for a confusing and excruciating experience.

A willful, independent and (atypically) unmarried woman, Borden was the center of a sensational murder trial, accused in 1892 of the gruesome axe murders of her father and stepmother. A children’s skipping rhyme even celebrated this infamous crime. The  eccentric Borden was ultimately acquitted and, though ostracized, remained in her small town of Fall River, Massachusetts; her story still fascinates. Additionally, as the crime remained unsolved, it became the stuff of vivid speculation and legend.

Pollock’s psychological murder mystery is well researched and deftly combines historical fact, including trial transcripts, with imaginative fiction and popular theories. Unfortunately, the sometimes arch dialogue — striving for cryptic banter — feels like padding, other times it is inelegantly expository. Jumping back-and-forth between the time of the trial and 10-years later, Pollock’s play maybe too clever for its own good, and the acting from this cast lacks the skill to support it.

As the show is staged on an unchanging drawing/dining room set, Jason Ryan Lovett’s lighting design could have done more to delineate between the two time periods. (Transitions from the Borden family home to a handful of courtroom scenes, however, are seamless.)

Carolyn Crotty plays Miss Lizzie in the 10-years-after-the-trial scenes, while Lizzie’s friend, a stage actress (Meg Wallace), plays out the role of the accused in the flashback scenes that lead up to the murder and trial period. Things really start to unravel during these flashback scenes when Crotty is either silently observing the proceedings as future Lizzie, or portraying the family’s Irish maid, Bridget Sullivan. It also doesn’t help that Crotty’s Irish brogue fades in and out like the reception on an ill-tuned radio station.

Pollock apparently wants us to make our own decision on whether or not Borden was guilty. Yet Pollack’s clumsy dramaturgy, coupled with the blatant presentation of her own version, thinly disguised as a re-enactment, conspire against the possibility of any other interpretation of events.

It’s a shame because the Lizzie Borden saga remains a mystifying and fascinating ripped-from-the-headlines tale.  

Collaborative Artists Ensemble at the Raven Playhouse, 5233 Lankershim Blvd., N. Hlywd.; Fri.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 7 p.m.; through June 15. (323) 860-6569, www.plays411.com/bloodrelations