House Theatre's 'Hatfield & McCoy' is a feud worth taking seriously - Chris Jones, Chicago Tribune - "The House Theatre of Chicago has pursued a 12-year love affair with the famously warring Hatfields of West Virginia and McCoys of Kentucky. This Chicago theater, known for its innovative original works with mythic underpinnings, clearly sees Shakespearean echoes in the famous family feud, the closest American equivalent, they here imply, to the sectarian War of the Roses, the main source for the great Elizabethan history plays.

This runs counter to the usual place of the Hatfields and McCoys in popular culture. They're more usually portrayed as "Hee-Haw"-like yahoos; their rivalry, actually rooted in competing Civil War allegiances, as barnyard squabbling with rifles. To wit: On the parkway in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, you can attend the long-running "Hatfield & McCoy Dinner Show," where the history is milked for laughs, fistfighting and clogging as audiences munch fried chicken and mashed potatoes, with no hint of post-modern self-awareness.

No corn on the cob at the House. Here, Rose Anna McCoy is the Juliet of the Tug Fork river, and Johnse Hatfield her Romeo.

I first reviewed this huge piece - which was penned by Shawn Pfautsch, lasts close to 3 hours and features a cast of 20 and a three-piece live band - back in 2006. It is vastly improved now as a piece of theater, mostly because of the addition of songs that make the piece land pretty much like a full-blown bluegrass musical. The singing frequently is very good, and the numbers (the work of Pfautsch and Matt Kahler) are resonant, off-beat lyrics and all. Matt Hawkins' direction has come a long way too, and the current staging of the show features a standout performance from Haley Bolithon as Rose Anna, who becomes the kind of youthful conscience of the show: the hope of the future, the reason to stop fighting, a point of empathetic connection.

Hawkins also has found a few actors of notable verbosity to wrap their larynxes around Pfautsch's high-faultin' language, most notably Robert D. Hardaway, who plays Devil Anse Hatfield, and Jamie Vann the town marshal, who often sounds a bit like Fortinbras in the final scene of "Hamlet." The piece rarely is overplayed; there's a commitment to truth without condescension and the piece is very much in the signature House style - a social event, a communal meditation on a theme, emotionally charged exuberance, spilling out into the audience. Everyone is very welcoming, given all the dead bodies that pile up in the piece.

The other change for the better is the addition of choreography by Katherine Scott, more stylized movement in the Steven Hoggett mold than legit dance, but a crucial addition of an emotional vocabulary to all the gunfights.
I wouldn't say House, even now, has fully figured out what it wants the piece to say, or even what context best suits this epic affair in American history. Certainly, the Civil War underpinnings of the fight are underexplored, although less so, now. And there are a few moments that really grabbed me Sunday night, a couple by way of Stacy Stoltz, who plays Sarah McCoy.

The dramatic tension still comes and goes; you can't describe the piece as tight. So you really have to just chill out and go with the florid verbosity, and the pulpy spectacle, and the meandering styles and the meditation on what all this means in the here and now, and let it all wash over you as it may.
Likely, it won't quickly leave your skull; y'all.

From the Director - Murder and moonshine! Hoe-Downs and Holy Rollin'! It's the true tale of the most infamous family feud in American history. Gunplay and romance erupt between the Hatfields and McCoys, served up with a heaping helping of bluegrass and bloody revenge.

Shawn Pfautsch's love letter to Romeo and Juliet in a philosophically polarized America returns, once again helmed by company member Matt Hawkins.

On the border of Kentucky and West Virginia, North and South, Fact and Fiction, two cabins both alike in dignity wage a war of words and bullets. Now with more guns, more righteousness, and more un-neighborly conduct, The House presents: Hatfield & McCoy.