Tornado rips across East Houma street
January 2, 2008Brian Champange
January 7, 2008Everyone going to see Thibodaux Playhouse’s production of Maxwell Anderson’s over-the-top drama “The Bad Seed” should forget about sugar and spice and everything nice.
Since the Broadway premiere in 1954, “The Bad Seed” has been shocking audiences with its portrayal of a young girl who has no qualms about murdering adults to get what she wants.
The question concerning the play has always been, “Is it to be taken at face value, or is it camp?”
The most likely answer is that the work partakes of both seriousness and kitsch.
There is no question about its infamy. “The Bad Seed” is so sufficiently well known that Los Angeles’ Buzzworks Theater Co. has done a popular schlock send-up of the drama.
The play was a stage version of a novel, but the work is best known from the 1956 Hollywood adaptation. The movie altered the ending to suit 1950s filmgoers.
Thibodaux Playhouse (314 St. Mary St., downtown) will be staging “The Bad Seed” Friday, Jan. 18, to Sunday, Jan. 20, and Thursday, Jan. 24, to Saturday, Jan. 26. All shows are at 7:30 p.m., except the Sunday matinee at 2 p.m.
Tickets are $10 for adults and $8 for students.
“Audiences should prepare themselves,” said director Bert Boquet. She (Rhoda, the girl sociopath) elicits the strongest reaction. It’s so cold. You don’t imagine a child being that cold. You want to see them as more loving. You’re seeing something different than we normally get.”
The girl is being played by theater newcomer Marcel Hebert.
“She’s doing well,” Boquet said. “We told her this is all make-believe. You have to have believability, but she knows this is not real. She gets offstage and plays with her friends, clowning. She sees it’s just acting.”
In casting the part, parents had understandable concerns about their child playing Rhoda. Hebert had hung around backstage during a recent Playhouse production, so Boquet asked her to do the role.
He solved the problem about parents’ objecting to the girl character fairly easily. He cast Hebert’s real mother, Daphne Hebert, in the part of Rhoda’s mother in the play.
Daphne Hebert is also acting for the first time in theater.
“She’s had a hankering to do theater, but her motivation to do it was to be with her daughter,” Boquet said. “She said, ‘I’ve got to be there with her (daughter).’ She tried out, did a good job and I asked her to do it. She’s doing a bang-up job.”
Unfortunately, Daphne Hebert’s character does not get through the play alive, unlike the movie version.
The character successfully takes her own life, after slipping her “bad seed” an overdose of sleeping pills, which the girl survives.
In the film, Rhoda’s mother lives through the attempt. The girl, deus ex machina, is struck by lightning.
Audiences will not see any of the murders. All will take place offstage. The only violence occurs when Rhoda is given the sleeping pills.
Thibodaux Playhouse is offering a three-play package deal of “The Bad Seed,” “Rumors” and the musical “Jekyll and Hyde” for $28. Call (985) 446-1896 for reservations.
