Writer and Director: Heidi Van
This tiny show, the first of Camden Fringe 2025 at Hen & Chickens, gets off to a stirring start with Kate Bender leading a spiritualist meeting, claiming to be in direct contact with the spirits of the recently deceased. She and her sidekick, John Jr, quickly work the audience, offering us vouchers for the lonely Bender Inn with the promise of free pies. The foodstuff might alert us to the potential horror that awaits. But although Kate Bender’s apple pies are innocent enough, beware her doctored drinks. In no time at all, your skull will be smashed in by John Jr’s hammer, and you’ll end up buried in the orchard.
It’s a great story, and what’s more, it’s a true one. The Bloody Benders of Osage, Kansas got away with their senseless murders for over two years in the early 1870s. Then, when a traveller, George Longcor and his baby daughter fail to reach their destination, the hunt begins to find them and the truth is uncovered.
In dramatising the Benders’ story, Central Standard Theatre and Fishtank Theatre, under writer and director Heidi Van, has a strong cast of four. Van herself plays the widow Longcor and other roles. Vanessa Davis is memorably unsettling as the sinister John Jr, twitchy and blood-curdling in equal measure. Katie Gilchrist is completely convincing as the charismatic Kate Bender, whose charm lures victims to their deaths. Bob Paisley plays both the likeable victim, George Longcor and the strange and inarticulate Pa Bender.
The staging is basic, but shadows of the killer as he bludgeons his victims behind a thin curtain are suitably gruesome. But overall, Bloody, Bloody Kansas feels as if it needs to be further developed. At under 30 minutes, the discovery of the victims happens all too quickly and too much of the action in the latter half is simply narrated by Van as Mary York, the fictional writer of the story.
But the show has potential.
Runs until 2 August 2025
Camden Fringe runs until 24 August 2025
