The Jacksonian
Opening Night: November 7, 2013
Closing: December 22, 2013
Theater: Acorn Theatre
Set in Jackson, Mississippi, in 1964, The Jacksonian tells the story of respectable dentist Bill Perch, who moves into the seedy Jacksonian Motel after his wife kicks him out. His downward spiral is punctuated by encounters with his teenage daughter, a gold-digging motel employee, a treacherous bartender and his now estranged wife. Revolving around the night of a murder, The Jacksonian unearths the eerie tensions and madness in a town poisoned by racism.
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November 7, 2013
Mourning becomes Beth Henley. The humor in “The Jacksonian,” her delectably lurid new play on Theater Row, is as black as widow’s weeds. But with the aid of a crackerjack cast, directed by Robert Falls, this twisty study in murder, Mississippi-style, finds bright fireworks within shades of noir.
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November 7, 2013
This disturbing tale of a vigilante dentist in the old south who takes gory retribution on a church-bombing Klansman might alternately be titled A Time to Drill . Pulitzer Prize winner Beth Henley (Crimes of the Heart) delves into the realm of darkness with her latest play, The Jacksonian, now making its New York premiere with The New Group after debuting at the Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles. If Henley’s goal is to make us squirm in our seats by presenting a series of gruesome images and scenarios, much like a haunted house, mission accomplished. If The Jacksonian aims to leave us with a more lasting fear by playing on our deepest insecurities about a loss of control, it is only partly successful, and no thanks to a big-budget-yet-amateur-feeling production.
READ THE REVIEWNovember 9, 2013
Halloween has come and gone but the creepiness lingers at Theatre Row, where The New Group’s transfer of L.A.’s Geffen Playhouse’s premiere of Beth Henley’s The Jacksonian is thick with Southern Gothic atmosphere and dark humor.
READ THE REVIEWNovember 8, 2013
”I am a dead man. Terminal. A corpse.” Fred (Bill Pullman), an oleaginous barkeep with a slicked-back pompadour and a liquor cabinet full of skeletons, says these words in the first few minutes of The Jacksonian, an unnerving drama by Beth Henley (Crimes of the Heart, The Miss Firecracker Contest) running Off Broadway through Dec. 22. But they could apply to just about any of the play’s five characters, who haunt the grim interiors of The Jacksonian motel, a dingy hideaway in 1960s Mississippi where they stare dead-eyed at each other and keen over past mistakes.
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November 6, 2013
It is Jackson, Miss., 1964, which means that church burnings and lynchings are hardly more than a hooded night-ride away. And yet, here at the creepy Jacksonian Motel on the outskirts of town, bad relationships and even worse people are trolling outlandish white trashiness as if, just maybe, history were not poised to change their world.
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