It was the trial of the century, two centuries ago. Now, thanks to the brave pen of local playwright Joseph Aragon, the grisly case of William Burke and William Hare is a musical danse macabre.
True, in real life, Burke and Hare’s murders—done to produce corpses to sell to the lucrative medical-school market—weren’t punctuated by outbreaks of song and dance. But though Aragon’s script otherwise sticks close to history, Bloodless’s creative liberties inform a wickedly entertaining spectacle.
If you like your humour black, drink this one down. The antagonists (played by Murray Farnell and Derek Leenhouts) are rakishly comic, there’s a frolicking ditty about the bone structure of the pelvis and plenty of tongue-in-cheek conniving from Burke and Hare’s wives. But there’s heart in this one too, highlighted by the plucky actor playing intrepid prostitute Janet Brown.
Throw in some tough working-class Scottish and Irish accents (well mastered by the strong cast) and a plethora of memorable songs, and Bloodless is an off-beat tour de force: smart, dark, and daring.
—Melissa Martin