You’ve heard about the production of A Doll’s House running on Broadway, but you might not realize there’s a shorter, more absurdist version off-Broadway at the Connelly Theatre.
In this take—which makes up the second half of Zuzanna Szadkowski and Deb Knox’s head-scratching black comedy Fall River Fishing—Nora (Szadkowski) and Torvaldt (Jamie Smithson) are childless. (“If [Torvaldt] wants children he can go get them,” reasons Nora.) Christine (Susannah Millonzi) and Nils (Tony Torn) aren’t former but current lovers, pawing at each other madly after meeting the previous night in a support group “for loved ones of victims of murder,” explains Nils. Christine’s neighbors were all killed; “I was out of the country. I missed it,” Christine sighs. As for Nils: “I murdered my wife and two daughters years and years ago—in Los Feliz—that’s in LA—America—with a ball-peen hammer—on Christmas Eve… allegedly. Acquitted, of course.”
Then, despite the fact that Nora has prepped a spinach dip, Christine takes over her host’s kitchen, and emerges with a massive bowl of spaghetti with meat sauce…which she dumps unceremoniously on the dining room table. The sight of five grown adults shoving noodles in their own and each other’s mouths like some bizarro Lady and the Tramp is simply too ridiculous not to enjoy. (Especially when the hilarious Millonzi hoovers a bunch of spaghetti off Torn’s arm like a line of coke, throwing her head back in triumph when she’s finished.) Oh yes—there are five people at the table. The fifth is a heavily pregnant, blood-covered Sharon Tate (Knox), who periodically mentions “Roman,” as in her husband, Roman Polanski.
The second act of Fall River Fishing feels like almost an entirely different play. The show starts as a riff on the infamous crime of the late 19th century: the Lizzie Borden murders. (Bedlam is known for putting its own spin on the classics.) Breakfast in the Borden house is agony, with tight-fisted patriarch Andrew (Torn), trophy wife Abby (Millonzi), and random uncle Nathan (Smithson) griping about “chunky” yogurt, “funky” mutton, and gravy that looks like applesauce. In their downtime, actress Lizzie (Szadkowski) and the family maid, Bridget (Knox), attempt to alleviate their Chekhovian boredom by playing scenes. “Let’s do the Eva Braun/Helen Keller mash-up with Hitler cameo,” suggests Lizzie. But Bridget can’t stomach “actually authentic Nazi stuff,” so she suggests Nora from A Doll’s House with the Sharon Tate cameo. It’s the “best one you’ve ever done,” she tells Lizzie. “It’s like seriously other-worldly.”
Ironically, Fall River Fishing doesn’t really come to life until the bodies begin dropping. Abby gets it first, after a particularly brutal you’re-such-a-loser verbal thrashing of Lizzie. All the insults are too much for Bridget, who’s in love with Lizzie, and apparently as the housekeeper she has easy access to an ax. (“It’s a hatchet. I just remembered it’s a hatchet,” says Bridget.) Then she moves on to Andrew, in an act that sounds not unlike a butcher tenderizing meat. “She had to do it. You know?” Lizzie tells Nathan, who stumbles on her dad’s bloody body and who’s also in love with Lizzie. “She’s, like, a really good maid.”
Perhaps Act 2—which is more tightly written, despite an overlong exchange between Sharon and Torvaldt, who really wants her to be the mom he never met—is simply Lizzie & Co. acting out one of their scenes. And despite all the hacking and blood and talk of murder, it’s the outrageous al dente final scene that leaves the most lasting impression. Exiting the theater, everyone seemed to be talking about going out for spaghetti.
Fall River Fishing opened Feb. 26, 2023, at the Connelly Theatre and runs through March 9. Tickets and information: bedlam.org
