Crooked

Synopsis

14-year-old Laney arrives in Oxford, Mississippi, an outsider with a twisted back and only her writing to keep her company. When she befriends the hapless born-again Maribel, Laney's penchant for story-telling soon spirals out of control, sparking a spiritual and sexual journey that infuriates her Mum and threatens to tear their fragile world apart. A gloriously funny sideways glance at evangelical and Sapphic love way down south...

Our Review:

5 May 2006

You have to hand it to Mike Bradwell. The ebullient artistic director of the Bush Theatre is celebrating his tenth anniversary with a slice of juvenile Americana that manages to be low-level naturalistic and strangely bizarre in equal measure.

To that extent, Crooked by Catherine Trieschmann - a native of Athens, Georgia, whose other plays use the American Civil War and the Great Fire of London as backdrops - is a typical Bush play: apparently conventional with a personal, quirky tone.

Laney Waters is a 14-year-old girl who's trying to be a writer by making sense of her absent father and her own awkward, adolescent relationship with her mother, Elise. She also has a twisted back, a form of dystonia that Amanda Hale uses in her beguiling performance to suggest poetic originality.

As the setting is Oxford, Mississippi, it's only to be expected that religion will rear its head, and it does so in the obese form of Maribel Purdy, a 16-year-old, ...

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Latest User Review

195.82.123.181) - 13 May 2006:

An utter delight: Catherine Fleischmann's witty, quirky script turns on a sixpence...one minute you're rocking with laughter, the next you're fighting back tears. This was also a play I enjoyed discussing with my companion after: it is strangely haunting. Although the heady mix of religious fervour, women's issues, mental illness and screwball comedy might make this a little too out there for the mainstream, Fleischmann's gift for smart but poetic dialogue and wonderfully eccentric characterisations make her a writer to watch. I cannot imagine this play ever being better performed than it is here: Debbie Chazen, Amanda Hale and Suzan Sylvester are all magnificent. The final image is heartwarming and deeply disturbing...you need to see this marvellous piece to understand why. A knockout....

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