Lizzie Borden Receives Three Drama Desk Award nominations

May 3, 2010

Lizzie Borden has received three nominations for the 2009-10 Drama Desk Awards:
Carrie Cimma for Outstanding Featured Actress in a Musical
Bobby Frederick Tilley II for Outstanding Costume Design
Christian M. DeAngelis for Outstanding Lighting Design in a Play

All nominees will be celebrated at the annual Nominees Cocktail Reception to be held Thursday, May 6. You can see the full list of nominations at BroadwayWorld.com.

The 55th Annual Drama Desk Awards ceremony will take place on Sunday, May 23, 2010 at the F.H. LaGuardia Concert Hall at Lincoln Center. Former Drama Desk Award winner Patti LuPone will host the awards ceremony.

NY Times: Rock on, Ax Murderer: 40 Whacks, Many Songs

By Neil Genzlinger, The New York Times
September 25, 2009

Though ax-assisted patricide and step-matricide are rightly condemned in most polite societies, it sure is hard not to like “Lizzie Borden,” a rock musical being presented with wall-rattling glee at — ah, savor the incongruity — the Living Theater.

Carl Skutsch

Jenny Fellner in the title role of “Lizzie Borden,” a rock musical at the Living Theater that speculates on reasons for a rampage.

The show, a collaborative effort by Tim Maner, Steven Cheslik-DeMeyer and Alan Stevens Hewitt, has been around in one form or another since 1990. It is part of a long line of efforts to wrest entertainment out of the story of Borden, the O. J. Simpson of 1892, acquitted of the bloody murders of her father and stepmother in Massachusetts but still widely suspected. It’s a good match of genre and subject: hard rock for a crime of frenzied fury.

Four women perform the show under Mr. Maner’s direction, and their fine voices sell it. Jenny Fellner is Lizzie; Lisa Birnbaum is her strident sister, Emma; Marie-France Arcilla is a luscious neighbor, Alice; and Carrie Cimma, in a cocksure performance that ties the whole thing together, is the Bordens’ Irish maid. The four use way too many microphones in a tiny theater that requires none, but the excessive volume is part of what makes the piece work: it frees you somehow from taking any of it too seriously.

Some people are still debating Lizzie Borden’s guilt, but not the creators of this show. They assume she did the deed, and the scene in which she does it is a nutty high point. The musical starts with a factual framework but layers on assorted speculation, about lesbianism, incest and such.

The show struggles to establish and maintain a tone — is it high camp, low parody, operatic drama, or what? — but the four women are deliciously watchable. And what other show in town can say that its high point is a song (“Why Are All These Heads Off?”) about decapitated pigeons?

Victoria Clark and Christopher Ashley to Direct NAMT Musicals

By Adam Hetrick, Playbill
August 19, 2010

Tony Award-winning actress Victoria Clark and Tony Award-nominated director Christopher Ashley will stage new theatre projects during the National Alliance for Musical Theatre’s Festival of New Musicals in Manhattan this fall.

The 22nd annual festival, which allows theatre writers the chance to have excerpts of their works showcased before an audience of theatre professionals, will run Oct. 21-22.

Clark, a Tony winner for The Light in the Piazza, will direct The Trouble with Doug, authored by Will Aronson and Daniel Maté. Xanadu and Memphis director Ashley is slated to direct Heartbreakers by Robert Cary, Benjamin Feldman and David Gursky. Eric Stern will musical direct.

Also announced are Peter Flynn, who will direct the Georgia Stitt-John Jiler musical Big Read Sun; Dominic Missimi will stage The Bowery Boys by David H. Bell, Jeremy Cohen and Aaron Thielen, with music direction by Brad Haak.

The Giver, penned by Nathan Christensen and Scott Murphy, will be directed by Pam Berlin, with Vadim Feichtner as music director; Victoria Bussert will helm Steven Cheslik-deMeyer, Tim Maner and Alan Stevens Hewitt’s Lizzie Borden with musical direction by Matt Hinkley.

Sharon Rosen will direct Play It Cool by Martin Casella, Larry Dean Harris, Phillip Swann and Mark Winkler, with music direction by Joe Baker; and Daniella Topol and Jerry Dixon will co-direct Scott Ethier and Jeff Hughes’ Red Clay.

Founded in 1985 and based in New York City, The National Alliance for Musical Theatre is a national service organization dedicated exclusively to musical theatre. Kathy Evans is the executive director for the organization.

For more information visit NAMT.