San Diego Reader

Midwestern Gothic. Tourists pass through Baraboo on their way to the beautiful Wisconsin Dells. Marisa Wegrzyn's twisted comedy'll make them speed up through the city limits. Frank's been gone a year. Some say he ran off. Others whisper that wife Valerie, the local butcher, sliced and diced him out by the lake. Her knife-infested kitchen's full of secrets and potential culprits (too many, in fact). Along with Frank's disappearance, Butcher raises another question: how could a play with a gruesome subject be such a screaming hoot? Casting Deanna Driscoll as Gail, in the Moxie production, is one answer. Driscoll blazes through the role and, when the suicidal cop experiments with crack, goes four-alarm (Driscoll matches that scene, in a different key, when Gail tries to tape a farewell note). As Valerie's daughter Midge, Wendy Waddell merits high praise for creating a hilarious, and almost speechless, slacker. Linda Libby (Valerie), Jennifer Eve Thorn (a squeaky nice neighbor), and Don Evans (though he tends to speechify his lines as Donal) make strong contributions. Amy Chini and Esther Emery's set brims with details, and Jennifer Brawn-Gittings' costumes support an ongoing theme: baby it's cold outside.

June 13 through June 28