Synopsis: | The audience is invited to Lizzie’s party that she holds annually on the anniversary of the murders of her father and stepmother. These are the facts. On August 4th, 1892, Andrew Jackson Borden and his wife, Abby, were cruelly axed to death in their home in Fall River, MA. Lizzie Borden was accused and acquitted of the murders but she spent 10 months in jail awaiting her trial by jury. After her acquittal, Lizzie stayed in Fall River. She and her sister, Emma, inherited almost a million dollars.
During this 70 minute drama, Lizzie reveals the family secrets that might have contributed to the brutal ax murders including her father’s penny-pinching habits, her sister Emma’s death-bed promise to their real mother, a house with no hallways and bedrooms opening into each other and lots more.
Lizzie also talks freely about her love affair with one of the great Shakespearean actresses of the time, Nance O’Neil, and of her great love for animals.
The “poem” goes: Lizzie Borden took an ax and gave her mother 40 whacks and when she saw what she had done, she gave her father 41. Did she or didn’t she? That is the question to this day, more than 100 years after that fateful August 4th.
Conn has read and researched and dug and sifted and created a Lizzie Borden with whom we can all identify. Come to Lizzie’s party. Listen to her story. Laugh, cry and have fun with her. Lizzie Borden scholars who have seen this play feel that this is one of the most thrilling as well as historically accurate portrayals of the real life events.
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