We Have Always Lived in the Castle (review)

Shirley Jackson's work, recently anthologized by the Library of Congress in its American Gothic series (2009), often puts eerie and ominous forces into familiar settings. Such themes emerged in the musical adaptation of Jackson's novella We Have Always Lived in the Castle, which dramatized two forms of evil: the psychopathology of a child-murderer, and the vindictiveness of small-town gossips. Shifting the novel's first-person narrative from Merricat Blackwood, the sulky, malevolent 18-year-old who allegedly poisoned her family, to her older sister Constance, their long-lost cousin Charles, and the villagers, lyricist Adam Bock and composer Todd Almond lessened the intensity of residing inside the head of Merricat, arguably a paranoid schizophrenic. Even so, the musical successfully captured the cruelties and deep mistrust of others that characterize a small-town in New England, where the Blackwood family's elitism earns the ill will of the villagers. Articulating the hidden paranoia of suburban America, the production captured a xenophobia no less timely in the current climate of anti-immigration legislation than it was during the cold war, when Jackson wrote the story. Through the eccentricities of the lead character, scenery that was slightly askew, and a musical score that alternated between sunny and macabre, the production revealed the violence that lurks within an ordinary community.

In one of the most offbeat depictions of a precocious adolescent in literature, Jackson depicts Mary Katherine (Alexandra Socha), or Merricat, as a case study in psychopathology: spunky one moment and obsessively controlling the next. The production established a darkly comic tone in the opening number, "We Blackwoods," in which Merricat expressed her family's superior attitude toward the villagers and her own preoccupation with the talismanic quality of certain objects to deflect change: "Home is where you love a thing so much you always put it back," she sang. Although her older sister Constance (Jenn Gambatese) was tried for and acquitted of the family's mysterious poisoning six years earlier, Merricat hinted that she might be the culprit. Winsome in her mischievous behavior (she does not like to wash, and she buries pieces of the family fortune outdoors), she rattled visitors to the Blackwood mansion with recitations of poisonous mushrooms, and her sangfroid provoked nervous laughter from the audience as well. While the novel's internal monologue permits Merricat to detail sadistic fantasies about harming the villagers, onstage she shared her vile cerebrations through direct audience address or with the help of an onstage chorus. One song in particular depicted the psychotic reverberations inside Merricat's head as she accused her cousin Charles of mercenary motives ("I Know You"). Four ghostly women emerged from the walls and surrounded her, eerily echoing her words in polyphony. As they repeated the threat inherent in lines like "These walls can draw swords, / These doors will bare their teeth," they moved Merricat's lyrics beyond idle fantasy into a lethal projection of her will.

Alexandra Socha (Merricat) in We Have Always Lived in the Castle. (Photo: Joan Marcus.)

The music in particular emphasized the dark undercurrent of domestic spaces. For example, Constance's defining song, "Tend Your Garden," with its alternating tempos of speed and repose revealed how she longs to escape the responsibility of caring for their paralyzed Uncle Julian (Bill Buell), but also suffers from agoraphobia. Liberation came in the form of cousin Charles (Sean Palmer), whose song "Family Never Walks Away" conveyed a wholesome character (much more so than Jackson's depiction of him as a boorish fortune-hunter). Charles's arrival injected a bit of normalcy into the macabre Blackwood nightmare, expressed in musical contexts from his buying a radio to teaching Constance to dance. These moments of musical uplift contrasted sharply with the tense battle between Merricat and him for Constance's affection. The production's contrasting romantic songs revealed Merricat...