American playwright Jeffrey Hatcher’s ‘Murderers’ is a subversive black comedy that turns everything on its head. The lights come on to reveal three characters sitting on plush seats. One after each other they get up and announce to the audience, ‘I am a murderer’. America is of-course the home of the twelve step program; pronouncements by people that they are an alcoholic…a drug addict…a sex addict are standard but that they are a murderer… we’re going into very different confessional territory!
‘Murderers’ is set in an exclusive Florida complex, a cloistered, manicured, environment where golf buggies drive the elderly around between the different shops, medical centres… It is in this gentrified environment that these three characters commit their grisly deeds.
Hatcher’s play has the three murderers, one after the other, directly address the audience in half hour monologues with their frank confessions and then exit the stage. First piece is ‘The Well Dressed Man is A Murderer’. Richard Sydenham is on top of his game playing Gerald Halverson, a suave middle aged man who gets caught up in a tax evasion scam. His girlfriend’s mother, a very wealthy woman, is told that she has a terminal illness and has only a few months to live. Her accountant tells her that when she dies that most of her money will disappear unless she gets married, in which case most of her wealth will go to her new husband. Gerald agrees to put his relationship with his girlfriend to one side, marries the mother, and goes off to live in the retirement home, the youngest man there! The best laid plans of mice and men….
In the next piece, ‘Margaret Faydle Comes to Town’, Nancye Hayes gives a good performance as Lucy Stickler, a betrayed wife who sets out on a path of revenge. Stickler finds out that her old nemesis Margaret Faydle, has moved in to the resort. Worse still she soon works out that her husband and Margaret have resumed their liaison. For Lucy it’s a case of game on, and she comes up with a unusual revenge plan.
With ‘Match wits with Minka Lupino’, Hatcher has saved up his best piece for last. Zoe Carides is great as the avenging angel, Minka Lupino who works in management at the retirement community. Lupino takes out her revenge on family members who mistreat people that they have slotted into the retirement village. Lupino has quite a few scalps, she could be called a serial killer, but she says she doesn’t like the phrase!
‘Murderers’ is sassy black comedy that is given a polished treatment with Mark Kilmurry’s elegant production. Jeffrey Hatcher’s ‘Murderers’ plays the Ensemble Theatre, Kirribilli, until Saturday 20th November, 2010.
