Reviews of shows from the New York International Fringe Festival will appear on ArtsBeat through the festival’s close on Aug. 25. For more information, go to fringenyc.org.
Riffs on pop culture have been a steady part of New York’s fringe festival from the beginning, but so has straightforward real-life tragedy. “38 Witnessed Her Death, I Witnessed Her Love†was a heartfelt tribute to Kitty Genovese in 2009, and the airplane-in-distress drama “Charlie Victor Romeo†had some of its earliest performances at the event.
James Vculek’s spare, sure-footed drama “Carol and Cotton†fits solidly in this mode, unspooling the true story of a 1963 murder in St. Paul, Minn., with a minimum of histrionics. The brutal facts speak for themselves.
Two actors, Catherine Johnson Justice and Steve Swere, tackle six characters between them, but Mr. Vculek (who also directs) begins and ends the play with Carol Thompson, a chipper mother of four who will soon stagger from her suburban home covered in blood, a knife blade lodged in her neck.
The tawdry events leading up to this horrendous crime, which became known in Minnesota as “the crime of the century,†are parceled out bit by bit. A convoluted murder plot became even more complicated: The man hired to do the murder ended up outsourcing the job to a drunk whose frantic efforts would include shooting, drowning, bludgeoning and finally stabbing the woman.
Mr. Swere excels as Carol’s officious husband, T. Eugene “Cotton†Thompson, as well as a smarmy colleague of his and the investigator assigned to the murder. Ms. Justice does what she can with the play’s only poorly written role, a dippy “secretary†who can’t remember whether M or N comes first, but her stirring, deeply sad take on Carol more than makes up for it.
Like Cotton’s browline eyeglasses, “Carol and Cotton†eschews current fashions for a no-frills style that has never stopped working.
“Carol and Cotton†continues through Aug. 15 at the Kraine Theater, 85 East Fourth Street, East Village.
