Here's the segue…
An early Pink Floyd instrumental is called, wait for it, Careful With That Axe, Eugene. I recommend the live performance from Live At Pompeii. It starts softly, melodic, seductive, slowly building in intensity until all hell breaks loose as Waters screams and Gilmour's guitar wails surrounded by Wright's psychedelic soundscape and Nick Mason's pounding drums. Replace Eugene with Lizzie and you're on the money.
All this is to say that at the interval I remarked to another audience member that Lizzie is not so much a musical as it is a rock concert. This is a live performance of a concept album; that concept being the motivations and fallout of Lizzie Borden murdering her father and stepmother with an axe; decidedly not carefully. That revelation, to me, explains all the choices co-directors Kieran Ridgway and Luke Miller make from lighting design, the staging, the prominence of the band, down to costume design and the stylised movement of the cast.
Let's start with the seven-piece band who take up most of the stage space with lights interspersed between them, front and back, and amps aplenty. It's a rock concert and they are the engine that drive the show. They are excellent under Musical Director Akari Komoto who also plays piano. I really liked the rock infused score that crackled with energy and was loud and aggressive where it needed to be, and quieter in moments of character introspection.
Lead guitarist Sarah Curran makes an immediate impression and adds a seventies style tone when the electric guitar was the pre-eminent instrument of the era. The presence of Kiara Burke on cello adds a hint of Spring Awakening texture and class. They all rock out when called upon which had me rocking along with them. Take a bow, Komoto, Curran, Burke, Chelsea Cheah (piano), Silvia Salaza Molano (guitar), Erin Steicke (bass), and Martha Bird (drums).
Here's the trade off though. In fact there are a few. The volume of the band when they're cranked up and into it is going to submerge the vocalists, even one as powerful as Lukas Perez. That's fine at a concert when everyone knows the words to a decades old classic or have listened to a new release multiple times, however, this is a somewhat obscure musical so the songs were completely foreign to me.
I certainly understood the gist of what was going on but most of the lyrics were lost in the upbeat numbers. Attitude of delivery, the interaction of our singers, and a passing knowledge of who Lizzie Borden was and what she allegedly did carries me along. Though the writers pretty much put a line through 'allegedly' and point the finger directly at Lizzie as the culprit... while seeking to give plausible reasons as to why that might have been.
The other trade off is the band takes up a lot of space. It leaves only a narrow strip for our four cast members to work in though there is also a second level where the creation of open barn doors in the rustic wooden set is used as a focal point. Set design by Luke Miller with set painting by Shelly Miller which depicts the two victims' portraits on the rear wall. As an aside, I'm with Mister Borden; pigeons are flying vermin.
Let's get to our four lead vocalists in this rock extravaganza. Perez shines as Lizzie Borden, both vocally and in depicting an emotionally troubled woman. An early highlight is This Is Not Love where the clear inference is that Lizzie is being sexually abused by her father. Lizzie is surrounded by her older sister Emma (Brittany Isaia), housemaid Bridget Sullivan (Sarah McCabe), and neighbour Alice Russell (Jessica Huysing) and there is the symbolic removal of an outer garment as Perez rocks us in another way with a plaintively sung ballad.
Isaia brings older sister angst to the portrayal of Emma while McCabe is fussy common sense and practicality as the servant who witnesses all. Huysing's Alice is allowed to be much sweeter in the first half as a suggested love interest of Lizzie's before a harder edge comes into focus after the break. They all sing and harmonise well together though Huysing's mic seemed to have a different tone to it. Perez is given every opportunity to belt out numbers with those impressive pipes and there's plenty of echo and reverb used throughout.
The first half ends with - spoiler alert - yep, you guessed it. The second delves into the trial and aftermath. Any pretence that this isn't a rock concert is dispensed when the four lead vocalists of our rock group come out with handheld mics and are flanked at the front of the stage by guitarists Curran and Molano for the final couple of numbers. They're bathed in an orgy of lights as the band and vocals reach a crescendo. Rock on.
Lighting design by Bailey Fellows is a showy, multi-coloured spectacle that enhances the rock concert vibe, particularly with the use of an array of lights nestled around the band at stage level. Costume design by Sarah McCabe is an eclectic mix of 1892 period piece in the first half, then modern goth in the second. McCabe's housemaid could be an extra from Rocky Horror in the latter going with an ostentatious wig (Tashlin Church) capping off the illusion. Choreography by Naomi Capon is angular and awkward but again, it makes greater sense if you think of those gloriously over the top 70s concerts before the arrival of punk skewered the self-pretention of the supergroup and rock god.
Lizzie is loud, it's raucous, it's aggressive. If I considered it as a musical, does it work? No. As a rock concert, I loved the band, enjoyed the score, and accepted the over-the-top theatricality which is a different kind of spectacle to a stage musical. This feels like a cult classic in the making that will attract a niche audience. That appears to be the M.O. for this production company as they offer up a harder edged selection of lesser known works that will appeal to younger and more diverse theatregoers.
Lizzie is on at the Don Russell Performing Arts Centre in Thornlie until 22 March.
