What are People Saying About it?

Full Quotes:

"Marvelously clever tales"
CurtainUp.com

"A wonderful sense of the ridiculous"
CurtainUp.com

"A piece that is simply charming"
CurtainUp.com

"Slyly charming"
The New York Times

"Delightfully dark humor"
TravelWisconsin.com

"As delightful a group of killers as one is likely to encounter"
TheatreMania.com

"People will be too busy laughing to be frightened"
TalkinBroadway.org

"Murderers is a delight - a very funny comedy"
TalkinBroadway.org

"Biting satire and terrific storytelling"
TalkinBroadway.org

"Offbeat, killer comedy"
Broadwayworld.com

"Will leave audience members grinning"
Broadwayworld.com

"Elegant, pitch-black comedy"
Philadelphia Inquirer

"Slightly wicked fun with amorality? Bingo!"
Seattle Times

Read the full reviews:

'Murderers' a clever mix of morality, justice, Michael Grossberg, The Columbus Dispatch

CATCO's season opener full of twisted and delightful hilarity, Dwayne Steward, Metromix Columbus

Murderers: A Curtain Up Review

Talkin Broadway.org

Broadwayworld.com

Read the impressions of Columbus Monthly Blogger Jackie Mantey,
who volunteered as a line prompter for a Murderers rehearsal (registration required):

Who's the Playwright?

Jeffrey Hatcher                   

Jeffrey Hatcher is fast becoming one of the most prolific and frequently produced playwrights in the United States. A Steubenville, Ohio native and Denison University graduate, Hatcher attended New York University to study acting. After a brief stage career, Hatcher turned to writing plays as well as film and television screenplays. His award-winning original plays have been performed on- and off-Broadway, and in regional theatres across the country and abroad. Three of Hatcher's works have been produced by CATCO-Three Viewings in 1996 and his adaptation of Henry James' The Turn of the Screw and Scotland Road in 1997.

Play Notes

“Aging American Style”

Unlike the “death panels” rumored to be embedded in the Obama health care reform policy, Jeffrey Hatcher’s 2005 Murderers clearly indicates that while there may not be an American Idol-type panel of judges deciding which elderly person lives or dies, there are certainly a good number of individuals out there ready, willing, and able to knock off a few members of the Florida-based Riddle Key Retirement Community. Hatcher, whose play interrogates “the American Way of Waiting for Death” (Dunleavy), based the first monologue on an experience he had with his wife and his mother-in-law whom he describes as a “Rockefeller Republican type who had liberal social views but who hated paying anything to the government.”

In addition to the finer points of estate planning, Hatcher’s Murderers is, of course, about murder and murder mysteries. Hatcher, who inverts the usual mystery form, has characters confess right away so that each monologue is not a “whodunit,” but instead, in Hatcher’s words, the more interesting kind of mystery, the “how-did-it, why-did-it, who-hasn’t-wanted-to-do-it?”

Such an approach is not unique to Hatcher--Columbo does it, Dial M does it, but the use of the monologues is, and this may prompt pragmatic audience members to ponder the state of the theatrical economy (and perhaps inspire contributions to the CATCO coffers!). But Hatcher’s monologues are not merely created out of economic necessity; they serve artistic and thematic purposes. The form is basically theatre without a net. There is no comrade-in-arms, no other character to offer assistance on stage. It is one of the most elemental forms of theatre--little set, little distraction. Our attention is focused on, in this case, homicidal confessions. As The New York Times noted, “the joy of the show is in the intricacies and deviousness of the murder plots, so the audience is called on to figure out the whys and hows.” But what’s more, these monologues force us to reconsider our own golden years, years that many of us think will bring peace of mind. In darkly comic fashion, Hatcher’s monologues demonstrate otherwise--we may retire, but we may still want to kill off our nearest and dearest!

Selected Production History:

• Asolo Repertory Theatre, Asolo, Florida March 2009
• NextAct Theatre, Milwaukee, WI November - December, 2008
• Hudson Stage Co, NYC October-November 2007
• Seattle Repertory Theatre, October 2007
• Philadelphia Theatre Company, October 2006
• Illusion Minneapolis, MN Theatre, March 2005