In ‘Lizzie,’ an oppressed daughter driven to murder
over 7 years in Star Advertiser
There is something wildly freeing about the savage killings in “Lizzie,” a distinctly feminist take on the notorious Lizzie Borden, history’s most famous, if unproven, mom-and-pop slayer. This sense of liberation derives from murders enacted with the methodical exhilaration of a jailbreak — a cathartic response to years of oppression by her miserly father, Andrew (Jamey Sheridan), and loathed stepmother, Abby (Fiona Shaw). And when Lizzie strips naked before hacking her two tormentors to slivers, her nudity isn’t simply practical: It’s the repudiation of a 19th-century wardrobe that controlled women’s movements as thoroughly as men did.