This story is best known as the ditty where Lizzie Borden took an axe and gave her mother 40 whacks. As this lively and informative show tells us, even this scant information is wrong in almost every particular. It was 19 blows her stepmother received, the initial murder weapon was more likely to have been something other than an axe, and it was a hatchet, anyway, which finished off Abbie Borden.
The three actors from Out of the Forest Theatre have reconstructed the Lizzie Borden tale using trial records, creative re-enactments and songs. This versatile trio use guitar, fiddle and mandolin to give pace to their true crime mystery. Written as a play within a play, three actors argue over how to cover the events of the trial of the murder which took place in Fall River, Massachusetts on 4th August 1892. Sasha Wilson has written a splendid script while acting as narrator and playing Lizzie. Lawrence Boothman and David Leopold play all the supporting roles – frothy maid, sour stepmother, coy sister, bewigged judge and stern father with over-the-top enthusiasm and comedic cross-dressing.
Lizzie Borden stood accused of the very modern crime of a middle class person killing their parents. It is not common now, but it is certainly not unknown as it was in the late nineteenth century. Abbie Borden was not, in fact, Lizzie’s mother but her step mother who she despised. We know less about her relationship with her father, but he was bludgeoned to death too.
Did she do it is part of the mystery this piece examines, followed by a more intriguing question: why did she do it? Bury the Hatchet looks at an intriguing theory that Lizzie was having a lesbian affair with her maid, and her stepmother found them at it. This would at least explain why the maid refuses to implicate Lizzie. The historic Lizzie remained unmarried though she did have a relationship with an actress which raised eyebrows.
What would the jury decide? There were so many reasons they couldn’t hang her – as a woman and as a genteel woman from a good family with plenty of money. People like her didn’t, according to the morals of middle class Massachusetts, commit crimes, and since nothing was stronger than morality, she didn’t do it.
Debates ranged around the horror of having to hang a woman – would the witnesses be able to see up her skirts as she was suspended there? Quel horreur.
Great entertainment from a talented trio.
Playwright: Sasha Wilson
Director: Vicky Moran
Cast: Sasha Wilson, Lawrence Boothman, David Leopold
Duration: 1 hour 15 minutes, no interval
Until: 5th September 2026