Catch the Butcher

"…Adam Seidel's serio-comic CATCH THE BUTCHER…evoke[s] both the dank confines of Hannibal Lecter's cell in The Silence of the Lambs and the fireplace textures of 1960s suburban homes. Both environments, literally or figuratively, can be prisons, which is only appropriate for this quirky, unsettling and rewarding play.

Strains of the country ditty All My Ex's Live in Texas…conjure the location. Nancy, a single woman, sits on a park bench before she is chloroformed and kidnapped by Bill, a fastidious serial killer. Awakening in his basement liar, she finds him with accessories familiar to fans of Dexter and the Hostel movies: an industrial apron and a cabinet full of chemicals and surgical instruments. Bill intends to kill her, but she enchants him with her admiration for the poems he composes and leaves with his victims. It turns out she intentionally positioned herself as bait.

The bond between the lonely Nancy and the broody Bill evolves into love and, briefly, a kind of conservative domestic bliss: She cleans house and cooks, while he goes to work (he's a doctor) and returns to read the newspaper, have a martini and be doted on. But Nancy grows bored, and reaches out to their neighbor Joanne, whom she invites over, against Bill's wishes, for supper. Bill, a control freak is not pleased.

…Mr Seidel's effective blend of romance, absurdism, satire and dread…"

Andy Webster, The New York Times