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Murder and Edna Redrum (Gateway Players, 1989)...devilishly fun and funny, spirited and engaging. The script’s preening cleverness is pure entertainment with a surprise-laden crime story that advances its genre and spoofs it, spoofing itself in the process of unfolding a tale rampant with bloody greed, sordid sex and, above all, wordplay. “Murder and Edna Redrum” is a palindrome; it reads the same backward as forward. Locke’s play employs multiple reversals, both in plot and language, with reversed and reflected phrases, sentences, situations and images, some eloquent as Emma’s description of a parting: “I turned my back on my twin and she on me.” ...Locke’s storytelling is deft. Sacramento Bee The play is a mystery with elements of farce. But perhaps more importantly, the play is an homage to palindromes. They’re in the dialogue and the characters’ names. Elements of the plot are palindromic. Even the set is palindromic, with a full-length mirror, through which characters mysteriously and palindromically enter and exit, offering a bizarre distorted reflection of what passes in front of it. Grass Valley Union It was great fun writing the palindromes for Murder and Edna Redrum which title is in itself a palindrome. My favorites were: Tulsa slut ! Em you buoy me ! Revile liver ! As Emma says of this last one, “The e swings, you see.” It’s great fun, then, to watch Emma work her methodical way to the longer, instructive and prophetic palindromic warning she next issues to her maid Hannah: Deliver evil, Hannah, live reviled ! 
The mirror was featured prominently in both productions of Murder and Edna Redrum since the center of a palindrome is in fact a mirror image. Here I am as Dennis (Dennis and Edna sinned) trying to find my way out of my maze of murder and mayhem, my weapon at the ready. And finally there is the strained palindromic revelation by Emma, recognizing that her supposed twin Edna is in fact imaginary: Emma and Edna am mE ! To read the 1993 version ofIn 1996 I revised the play substantially because I cast a man with an English accent as Dennis. To read the 1996 version of
Copyright © 2004 Robert Locke |