The State Versus John Hayes - July 26th to 27th
Written by Lucy Roslyn
Presented by Bearded Theatre, guests of the Criterion Theatre
Starring: Lucy Roslyn
We are very proud to welcome back our friend Lucy Roslyn to the Criterion as she performs her one-woman thriller The State Versus John Hayes. Lucy started in our youth theatre and progressed through the ranks before going to drama school. This funny and seductive thriller comes to the Criterion before it heads to Edinburgh for a month in August.
'If you make the disguise so Goddamn good, people forget you're in it...'
Seductress, or psychopath? Murderer, or victim? Electric chair, or psychiatric hospital?
Huntsville Prison, Texas, 1959. Elyese Dukie is on Death Row for the murder of two people: the husband she despised, and the woman she killed him to be with.
Tomorrow, she goes to court for the last time. But tonight, you're the jury. As Elyese reveals what she won't tell the court, or the string of psychiatrists they’ve sent into the jail to diagnose her. She may be in solitary, but she is not alone in her cell. John Hayes is in there with her, as he has been all along. On what may be the last night of her life, she makes a final appeal for understanding. But is she a calculating psychopath who deserves the electric chair? Or a multiple personality who needs psychiatric help?
Laced with dark humour, raw pain and real poignancy, Lucy Roslyn's powerful new one-act play is based on extensive research into real-life female American killers, and their lives on Death Row. It’s a fascinating and dramatic exploration of human sexuality and the psychological forces that collide to make one woman kill.
In one hour alone on stage Elyese conjures all the people who have made her the man she is today, as she contemplates what will happen to her next. This striking one-woman thriller is, by turns, funny, seductive and chilling.
"Lucy Roslyn is utterly compelling ... she is by turns witty, endearing and surreal, seducing her audience utterly before she reveals chilling glimpses of the psychopathic killer within ... the direction is subtle and precise, the writing is brilliant and the performance is magnificent" Katie Campbell - Londongrip.com.