A HAUNTING, TRAGIC TALE
PLAY MULLS THE COMPLICATED LIFE OF LIZZIE BORDEN
Rachel Walliser’s Lizzie Borden is a sympathetic character — at least in this scene.
During a recent rehearsal of Blood Relations at the University of Regina, Walliser spills her heart to Brad Mcdougall, who portrays Lizzie’s father Andrew.
“I was born and she died. … Do you hate me for killing her?” the daughter asks, referring to her mother, Sarah, who died when Lizzie was a toddler.
“You don’t think of it that way. It was just something that happened,” he replies.
“Perhaps she just got tired and died. She didn’t want to go on, and the chance came up, and she took it,” Lizzie speculates, sadly. “I could understand that.”
Lizzie Borden was a 32-year-old single woman in August of 1892, when her father and stepmother were attacked and killed by an axewielder in their Massachusetts home. Lizzie was charged with the crimes.
Though a jury acquitted her of the charges, the accusations that she murdered her family followed her throughout her life.
Sharon Pollock’s play, Blood Relations, “teases us with possible answers to the question,” said Mark Claxton, who directs the U of R theatre department production, which begins Wednesday.
“The story is haunting, it’s tragic, it’s compelling, and the script is so clever that you really are kind of kept guessing throughout. … It’s ultimately a really human story about the potential Lizzie Borden in all of us I think.”
Lizzie is a complex character — actually, two characters, in this play.
Nicole Garies portrays Miss Lizzie and Bridget, the maid. Walliser is the “actress” friend, who becomes Lizzie in a role-playing game.
“It’s sort of like a play within a play,” said Garies, “so for the times that Rachel is Lizzie, she’s Lizzie 10 years in the past, while I’m Lizzie in the present.”
“She’s such a complicated person,” said Walliser, whose character’s emotions run the gamut.
“Because she’s not alive anymore, there’s lots of theories about what mental illnesses she did suffer from,” Walliser added.
“Some people think she was bipolar; some people think she had multiple personality disorder. I think it really comes out when she’s stressed.”
“(The play is) way ahead of its time in how it begins to tell a story about how we marginalize certain people and the effect that can have on them,” said Claxton.
“It is about the question of whether or not she did the deed, but it is also very much about oppression and a lack of understanding around issues such as mental illness and sexuality and … a poor relationship between parents and kids.
“It’s about a lot of things, but it’s so clever and compelling and haunting. There’s a reason it has continued to be probably Sharon Pollock’s most produced play.”
The U of R production includes a set purposefully designed to feel claustrophobic, said Claxton, “because that’s what Lizzie experienced in the script, was she felt trapped in this house.”
Blood Relations premiered in Edmonton in 1980 and won the Governor General’s Literary Award for Drama the following year. Writing the play was a way for Pollock to explore her own identity.
“I simply had come to a place in my life where at the time I felt many of the things that Lizzie felt,” said Pollock, who attended rehearsal on Wednesday, while on campus for a playwrights’ reading series.
“It became a vehicle for me to say, ‘I’m so many things to so many people. I have six children, I’m my father’s daughter, I’m my brother’s sister, I’m whoever I’m playing as an actor. Like, is there any me? Perhaps there is no me, perhaps I’m only what is reflected in other people.’”
The U of R cast includes Traci Foster as stepmother Abigail Borden, Erik Lillico as step-uncle Harry, Hannah Macmurchy as sister Emma, and Tatsuhiro Ishido as Dr. Patrick and the defence.
Blood Relations runs Wednesday through Saturday (Oct. 24-27), 7:30 p.m., at the Riddell Centre Shu-box Theatre. Tickets are $20 and are available at the door, or by calling 306-585-5500 or emailing theatre@uregina.ca.