11th Hour Theatre Company presents 'Lizzie'

Lizzie, the rock musical by Steven Cheslik-DeMeyer, Tim Maner, and Alan Stevens Hewitt, references this familiar children’s rhyme early on. It summarizes the story of 11th Hour Theatre Company’s raucous Philadelphia premiere.

Dramatic tension or suspense, we learn from Lizzie, isn’t required, especially when a theater piece is part concert. Lizzie doesn’t speculate about the title character’s guilt – it’s vividly certain – and the reasons for her bloody crime are as psychologically connect-the-dots as an episode of Criminal Minds. Most of Lizzie is loud, angry rock, defining the creative team’s sympathetic view of the central character, and rousing good fun, pumped out by music director Dan Kazemi’s fine onstage band and an electrifying cast.

"Some crazy shite"

Director Kate Galvin’s production focuses on four characters. Alex Keiper plays young, cute characters extremely well, but shows her range by exploding furiously in the title role. Cara Noel Antosca is Lizzie’s older sister Emma, who comes nearly as close to a bloody outburst as Lizzie. Meredith Beck is neighbor Alice, Lizzie’s close friend. Rachel Brennan comments wryly on the action as servant Bridget (called “Maggie” by all the Bordens because that was the previous maid’s name). There’s “some crazy shite” going on, Bridget tells us, “in the House of Borden.”

Lizzie gets an appropriate steampunk aesthetic from scenic and lighting designer Thom Weaver, who uses three levels, all strewn with band luggage labeled “Lizzie”: top for the band, middle for a few scenes, and lowest and closest for in-our-faces songs, sung at standing microphones and lit in concert-style blasts of color, framed by the Christ Church Neighborhood House’s rough brick walls. Kayla Speedy’s costumes start with a semblance of 1892 period modesty but are gradually stripped away to a more modern, angry, steampunk leather-and-metal look.

Most of the songs require the cast to wail away. Rock, at its truest and most raw, is the music of youthful frustration and rebellion as well as macabre humor – and if some lyrics are lost in the shockwave, well, fuck it. “There’s no way out of this pressure cooker,” they exclaim – or, rather, there’s only one way.

Forego thought

Fortunately, Lizzie also has some quieter moments – tender, creepy, and a few perfectly tender-creepy – that reveal the relationships the creators spin from an inconclusive historical record. The connections and secrets they concoct are not quite suspenseful, but still better not revealed here.

Thinking too hard about deeper meanings could be counterproductive here. Mulling whether Lizzie advocates or celebrates bloody murder only detracts from Keiper’s mesmerizing bravura performance and the delicious moments rendered by Antosca, Beck, and Brennan.

Lizzie ends with a triumphant rock concert finale, and we’re even invited to sing along to that familiar ditty – which we do, reveling in Lizzie’s emancipation despite its gory cost.

To listen to Darnelle Radfod's podcast interview with Lizzie director Kate Galvin and lead actor Alex Keiper, click here.