Reclaiming Henry VIII’s wives from their “divorced, beheaded, died” rhyme made Six a hit musical. Three of that “histo-remix” show’s former queens now unite for this rock opera which aims to flesh out the character of US murder suspect Lizzie Borden beyond the deeds described in the callous quatrain: “Lizzie Borden took an axe, And gave her mother 40 whacks, When she saw what she had done, She gave her father 41.”
Lizzie, which has its origins in a 1990 song cycle, opens and closes with that playground rhyme, and stresses the persistent sensationalism surrounding the crimes of which Borden was acquitted. These days you can stay the night in “America’s most haunted house” where her stepmother and father were found dead on a summer’s day in Massachusetts in 1892. Centre stage, before the show starts, a gleaming axe rotates in a mirrored box. It’s a transfixing image.
