The Drowning Girls

by Beth Graham, Charlie Tomlinson, and Daniela Vlaskalic

Globe Theatre, 2015

There is a concept in law known as "similar fact" evidence. . . That legal concept was born with this case, known to law students everywhere as the "Brides in the Bath". The grandstanding forensic pathologist who solved the riddle of Smith's crime became known as the father of modern forensic CSI. I didn't know either of these things when I first read, and fell in love with, this script. I knew only that Bessie Mundy, Alice Burnham and Margaret Lofty were real women, and that they really died at the hands of a serial conman, bigamist, and murderer. I loved that this play gave their voices precedence. I loved that, instead of indulging our seemingly endless craving for salacious details of the inner workings of the sociopathic personality, Vlaskalic, Graham and Tomlinson instead focus on the women, and on the question of how they found themselves at the mercy of that sociopath in the first place . . . this is a cautionary tale. A 21st century "penny dreadful".
- kf program notes, 2015

photo: Jeff Hamon