Jonathan Chambers

Lizzie by Steven Cheslik-DeMeyer, Tim Maner, and Alan Stevens Hewitt (review)

Although billed as “a new American musical,” Lizzie, a rock opera based on the cause célèbre case that captivated the United States in the late nineteenth century, has roots in a four-song, experimental rock-cycle from 1990. Conceived by theatre artists/queer activists Tim Maner (lyrics) and Steven Cheslik-DeMeyer (music), that early rendition of Lizzie, produced by the Tiny Mythic Theatre Company in New York City, established a premise that has held through all iterations: the fury of the titular anti-heroine, which presumably led her to brutally murder her father and step-mother in 1892, is a fitting analog for the rage of queer activism. If the politics guiding Maner and Cheslik-DeMeyer’s work grew out of their connections to ACT UP–era activism, the narrative thread was inspired by a counter-theory, based on enduring rumors, that Borden was sexually abused by her father, and that the gruesome crimes she was suspected of committing (although, in the end, was acquitted) were spurred by her family’s discovery and subsequent repulsion of her lesbian identity. Thus in drawing on this unconventional version of historical circumstances and events, Maner and Cheslik-DeMeyer endeavored to re-envision Borden as a sort of queer heroine; in so doing, they also aligned their theatre piece with a more comprehensive project of recovering the queerness of American history.

Staging Modern American Life: Popular Culture in the Experimental Theatre of Millay, Cummings, and Dos Passos by Thomas Fahy, and: The Theatre of E. E. Cummings ed. by George Firmage (review)

events, organizations, and movements through key collaborators like Brecht and Lotte Lenya, Hellman and Cheryl Crawford, and Orson Welles and John Houseman. Theatre scholars will likely find interest in early chapters that detail Blitzstein’s influences in the experimental “art music” of Igor Stravinsky and political compositions by Kurt Weill and Hanns Eisler, as well as his involvement in the 1920s Greenwich Village social scene. Pollack’s evocative description of Blitzstein’s early work—for example, Percussion Music, a three-movement piano piece in which the soloist occasionally slams shut the keyboard lid for theatrical and percussive effect—sets the stage for the composer’s later rebellions against established forms and public expectations. Pollack includes a chapter on Blitzstein’s critical writings, recognizing his work as a prominent intellectual in addition to his musical compositions, while also providing a theoretical foundation for subsequent chapters that detail his most recognized work of the 1930s and ’40s. Blitzstein demonstrated his razor-sharp wit in early comedic operas like TripleSec (featured in the 1930 Garrick Gaieties) and The Harpies (1931), satirizing the pretentions of modern artists and their (also his) social circles before later turning his critical gaze toward capitalist corruption.