Review of the play "VICTIM" (By Vicky)

I really liked VICTIM. I went to see it at 3PM on Sunday with Hannah Reilly and Oliver at The Brick Theater. It's connected to another play, called Detectives. The two together form "A Brief History of Murder." Although we haven't yet seen Detectives, we suspect that the play we saw showed the murders themselves whereas Dectectives is more about the police officers trying to track down the murderer. It was a pretty bizarre syncretism of comedy, tragedy, gore, and science fiction. The piece leaves a lot of room for interpretation, and Hannah and I found ourselves arguing about the details of the plot afterwards. The main concept seemed to be that these two ghost-like women were controlling this wolf-man who eats peoples souls and the mayor of the town. There was a lot of body mutilation, and in one scene the women and the mayor eat human flesh. There is also nudity in the piece; one of the characters is a photographer who is doing a series on naked people with pastry. Although primarily used in comedy, nudity was also used to illustrate the photographer's relationship with others as well as his own personal insecurities and feelings of fear. In the play, the sheriff of the town becomes a hypnotized servant of the mayor and is later murdered by the wolf man with a bat. The scene that I felt the most powerful was the scene in which the reanimated corpse of the sheriff returns to his home to see his wife. His face smashed in and bloodied, he softly kisses his wife until her terrified shrieks cease and tells her he misses her. They dance together, and the sheriff says "everyone gets murdered. It ain't no big thing." I think that is the most important line in the play. I feel it reflects the intentions of the play; death is inevitable, life is inevitable, fear is inevitable, evil is inevitable. Obviously this play has so mmany interesting aspects to it you can't boil its message down to only that, but I think that is the major point of the play. I really enjoyed it, and will most likely go see Detectives with Hannah soon.