The story of Lizzie Borden, the Massachusetts woman who “gave her mother 40 whacks” with an ax, according to the grisly rhyme, gets a queer, camp interpretation in playwright Justin Elizabeth Sayre’s Lottie Platchett Took a Hatchet. The Los Angeles LGBT Center is celebrating its first anniversary with a new show. Criminal Minds Sayre, who will be playing Kirsten Vangsness as the title role, hopes to bring the show to New York City.
This is not the first queer adaptation of Lizzie Borden. Chloe Sevigny starred and produced the dark horror story LizzieKristen Stewart played the maid in, where Lizzie has a passionate affair with her. But Sayre’s take is a searing satire that takes aim at religious institutions, the treatment of women as hysterical, and the anti-immigrant sentiment of the era.
“There are so many layers to what both Lizzie Borden represents and also what went on in the cases. There’s this kind of very strong anti-immigrant feeling that was held up in the press and held up in the trial. “I thought that as a mostly Irish mutt I was, Oh, that’s fascinating. Wouldn’t that be interesting to do?” Sayre says
“Also, there’s been a reckoning around female bodily autonomy. I was curious about what it would feel like to…
