A musical, dark, somewhat comedy about a real life quartet of murderers, set in old Scotland, in the days when the only corpses available to medical schools were those from executed criminals. An underground industry developed in robbing graves and some medical schools turned a blind eye, only weakly questioning the origin of the corpses.
Burke and Hare stumbled upon the opportunity to make money off vagrants and loners, who passed away in Hare's rooming house, rather quickly progressing from taking advantage of an unclaimed body, to aiding someone close to death out of their misery to ultimately just targeting those who were alone and unfortunate enough to cross their path. Husband and wives colluded in luring their prey and incapacitating them so they could sufocate them, reserving a good specimen, free of trauma, for the doctors.
Presenting this in a musical is a very interesting approach to what is a somewhat morbid and sordid topic. However, it is very well handled by Theatre 20, the only artist led musical theatre troupe in Canada. Definitely a very talented group, with some powerful singing voices. While the descent into madness was a little quick, and therefore not quite credible, I suppose it was probably a sign of the times.
My son and I enjoyed the show and I love the Panasonic Theatre. All the seats are pretty good and tickets can be had for as little as $25 so well worth it. You may also want to check out the website for Theatre 20 and see what else is coming up.
No comments:
Post a Comment