"Sex and Violence" at Empire Stage Is Accidentally Entertaining
By John Thomason Thursday, Jan 27 2011
http://www.browardpalmbeach.com/2011-01-27/culture/sex-and-violence-at-empire-stage-is-accidentally-entertaining/The fact that Empire Stage chose to market the show with an image of a chain-saw-wielding cross-dresser is the first hint that this production will take a different tone from what the playwright intended. In an internal note posted by Larsen on his website, he asserts that Sex and Violence should be played straight: There is, he says, "not an ounce of camp in this play." The awkward stylistic jumble has more than a dollop of camp, most of it owing to Kitt Marsh's performance as a psychopathic housewife. The black comedies of the Coen brothers were an influence on Larsen, but director Jeff Holmes reaches more for John Waters-like trans-sleaze.
Sex and Violence is inspired by the true story of a low-rent New York transsexual who murdered her drug-dealing, slugabed husband in 1979 and hid his corpse in her closet for 15 years.
