Cue Zero production explores Lizzie Borden case
One century before O.J. Simpson’s televised court proceeding captivated a nation, a murder case in Fall River, Mass., was the country’s first big media trial. In it, Lizzie Borden was acquitted of killing her parents with an ax, but she remained forever guilty in the court of public opinion. Blood Relations, written by Canadian playwright Sharon Pollock and due to be performed by Cue Zero Theatre Co., explores the many questions that still remain.
Brian Dembkoski has long been drawn to the Lizzie Borden legend.
“Being a homegrown New England boy, it’s always been intriguing,” Dembkoski said in a recent phone interview. He decided to direct Blood Relations after seeing two very different performances of the play, in different parts of the country. “When I got to read it myself, I just kind of fell in love with it. Every single scene is a power struggle between characters, and it’s just so well-written.”
Billed as Lizzie’s side of the story, it’s structured as a play within a play. The main character, Miss Lizzie, played by Cass Durand, talks with her friend The Actress, played by Heidi Krantz, who wants to learn what really happened on the night of the murder.
“She basically says, ‘OK, you want to know if I did it? Let’s play a game,’” Dembkoski said. “Her friend then becomes the younger version of herself, and Miss Lizzie takes her through the scenario, puts her in the same situation … for her to make her own decisions.”
What ensues may or may not be a confession, he continued, noting that Borden is “a bit of an unreliable narrator, which is just one of the really neat, fascinating things about it…. We still have that ambiguity at the end; did she or didn’t she? Are we any closer to an answer than we were in the beginning? Hard to say.”
Along with playing the lead, Durand also acts as the play’s intimacy coordinator, a role Dembkoski felt was needed to help actors navigate a stiff-as-starch family dynamic. “It’s not so much because we’re having a lot of steamy scenes or anything; very much the opposite — rather, looking at what happens with people when they don’t have that basic intimacy…. It helps in exploring the idea of touch starvation or skin hunger.”
The cast includes Nate Faro playing “the ill-fated Andrew Borden” and Christie Conticchio as “the even more ill-fated Abby Borden.” Both have appeared in previous Cue Zero efforts. Faro was in Radium Girls and Conticchio directed the Harry Potter send-up Puffs two years ago. Dembkoski also appeared in that production, his initial Cue Zero foray.
Adding to the play’s meta multiplicity, Lizzie’s sister Emma is represented twice; Crystal Welch plays her late in life, and Chrissy Kelly, in a role created specifically for this production, plays a “modern-day Emma Borden, the actual sister much like Miss Lizzie is the actual Lizzie,” Dembkoski explained.
Rounding out the ensemble are Joshua Benham as Harry Wingate, Lizzie’s step-uncle and a pivotal character in her plot — if, of course, she was really guilty. The role of Dr. Patrick, Lizzie’s close ally, is played by Matthew Brides, who played the lead in Cue Zero’s 2023 production of Macbeth.
This is Dembkoski’s first directing job at Cue Zero. In the 1990s he studied theater arts at Plymouth State and then earned a master’s from Humboldt State, now Cal Poly Humboldt. After working in Southern California in the early 2000s, he left the theater world; he moved back to New Hampshire in 2007. When he began teaching at Nashua Community College in 2016, he was recruited to be an adviser with the school’s Theatre Arts Guild.
“That was my first kind of dipping my toes back into it … helping the younger folk and sharing some of my knowledge,” he said. As the pandemic was ending, Hatbox Theatre in Concord asked him to appear in its production of A Christmas Carol; there, he met Conticchio, which led him to Cue Zero.
There, he met Executive Director Dan Pelletier, who would agree to his pitch to do Blood Relations.
“A saying I’ve always clung to when it comes to doing anything in our field is ‘things lead to things,’ because doing Christmas Carol led me into Puffs,” he said. “Step forward a few more times to putting forth the idea to direct Blood Relations. Dan was happy to let me do it…. It was a great example of things leading to things.”
Sharon Pollock’s Blood Relations
When: Friday, March 1, and Saturday, March 2, 7:30 p.m.,
and Sunday, March 3, 2 p.m.
Location: Arts Academy of New Hampshire, 19 Keewaydin Dr., No. 4, Salem
Tickets: $15 at cztheatre.com
Featured photo: Courtesy photo.
