Vinegar Tom, by Caryl Churchill
Produced by Whistler in the Dark, at the Boston Centre for the Arts, Jan-Feb 2013
Directed by Mac Young
Lighting Design by PJ Strachman
Costume Design by Emily Woods Hogue
Musical Arrangements by Veronica Barron and Tony Leva
Violence Choreography by John Robichau and Marcus Watson
Photos: Meg Taintor, PJ Strachman
Fair warning: some of these images depict a staged hanging, and may be disturbing.
Something Churchill This Way Comes • The Hub Review
As you may have guessed by now, Vinegar Tom defies classification. But then Churchill was never one to value formal consistency for its own sake, and the Whistler production is so imaginative, forceful and focused that the rough joints and seams in her conception didn’t seem to matter much…
The lion’s share of props, however, I feel must go to director and designer Mac Young, a protean talent on the fringe who actually built for this production (in a rehearsal hall of the BCA, no less) a full-sized, completely structural - though utterly off-kilter - house frame, whose raw joists make the perfect setting for the scrapes of Churchill’s script. Director Young and costumer Emily Woods Hogue have even dreamt up a trick by which Churchill’s witches are hanged, quite convincingly, before our horrified eyes (although they soon spring back to life for a disconcerting vaudeville routine).