Wormwood
full-length play produced in 2010 at the Bryant-Lake Bowl
based on the 1890 novel* by Marie Corelli
review in HowWasTheShow
“…a tight little show – stripped down but inventive technically, with a fast-paced pairing of dialogue and direct-address narration.”
review in Twin Cities Daily Planet
“Condensing to a 75-minute script what was originally an 800-page manuscript, Hardcover Theater’s production tells the story of Beauvais’s absinthe-fueled decline from banker with a future to…well, suffice it to say he’s brought low.”
Poor Gaston Beauvais! When his fiancée falls for another man, he tries to drown his sorrows in absinthe, the sinister green alcoholic beverage with a reputation for making people crazy. But Gaston’s troubles have only begun, because now he’s haunted by the Green Fairy (the spirit of absinthe), who’s always urging him to do exactly the wrong thing. And soon the dead bodies start to pile up…
Towards the end of the nineteenth century, many Europeans saw absinthe as a major social problem; and the British were peering nervously across the English Channel, hoping they wouldn’t go the way of the French. Wormwood is a bizarre, lurid novel, and Hardcover has made a bizarre, lurid play out of it.
Come with us on a wild ride from drawing-room comedy to expressionistic nightmare! Dark and twisted, but somehow still suitable for older children.
cast: 3M, 3F, one keyboard player who makes live music & participates in scenes
written for an almost bare stage
* never before, to the best of our knowledge, adapted for the theater
