Tonight is rehearsal #1 for my new musical, A Healthy Marriage: The Hall-Mills Murders. Check out my artistic statement below:
The Hall-Mills murder has been discussed around dinner tables in New Brunswick, New Jersey since it occurred in 1922. Who did it? Why? Why was no one ever charged? Everyone from town has their own spin, and often their own personal connection. With “A Healthy Marriage: The Hall Mills Murders,” I set out to tell the story not as it happened, but as it has been told through oral history.
I heard it at my dinner table from my grandpa in 1994. I was 6. He was an ex-cop who, in his view, solved the case long ago, pinning the whole thing on a vengeful woman (a take that persists around many tables today). And so the story (which I differentiate from the “case”) became a cautionary tale about the scorned heiress who had her way. If you cheat, you could end up dead; If you’re too cold, your spouse may run out on you; If they’re not getting it at home, they’re getting it somewhere else. It’s easy for onlookers to turn the facts of the case into a one-sentence finger wag, but the story is much more complex. Before the case, there were four people who did not want to lie, steal, or kill. Four married people. But for two of them, something beautiful formed outside of that paradigm. And for the other two, something horrific. Love and pain, truth and disgust, faith and fear. In this musical, someone takes a shot at changing their life for the better. A friendship forms, hearts break, and violence has the final word.
This story is seen through the eyes of the locals- or as I call them, the Wickians- who experience amusement, titillation, righteousness, and fear as the affairs of the well-to-do class turn to bloody murder. We meet them in 1929, seven years after the killings, at the border between short and long term memory, where stories turn to legends.
We open on Sunday, February 19 at The State (FREAKIN!) Theatre in New Brunswick! Tickets at hallmills.com (lies, we’re sold out. But that’s also exciting!)