“She Kills Monsters” Review

She Kills Monsters Review

Amy Phillips, Reporter

       The 2019 Spring Black Box play She Kills Monsters was a bit more… magical than past productions. It waas performed May 2nd, 3rd, and 4th.
The show centered around Agnes (Sammy Bernstein ‘19), a girl mourning the death of her family and younger sister, Tilly (Izzy Thorpe ‘19), with whom she never closely connected. After finding Tilly’s Dungeons and Dragons modules, Agnes began an adventure through the story her sister designed, meeting many mythical creatures and slaying her fair share of monsters along the way.
The actors promised and delivered many hilarious and scandalous moments throughout the show. “The Farrah the Faerie fight is by far the funniest,” Adina Cazacu-De Luca (‘20) laughed, “Eli Hurwitz decided to try a high pitched Tinker Bell voice for this fairy that is anything but sweet. I don’t think my favorite line is appropriate for the newspaper.”
And if provocative, murderous fairies didn’t catch your eye, the many fight scenes successfully drew a big crowd. The show sold out both its Friday and Saturday night performances. “This show has a lot of fighting, and the choreography is epic!” Bernstein gushed, “I love fake kicking some butt. Wielding a sword has brought out a lot of inner strength that I never knew I had.”
The often dark yet quirky plot pulled in many aspiring Burroughs actors like Shayfer Huitt (‘22), who shared, “I was actually originally not going to try out, but when I learned the play was about Dungeons and Dragons, I quickly changed my mind as the topic seemed super different and exciting.”
But Huitt reinforced that the show was for everybody, nerd or otherwise. “Although the play is about Dungeons and Dragons, the protagonist is a girl who knows nothing about this other world, and we see the events unfold from mostly her perspective,” Huitt noted, “So if you’ve played D&D before, there is a lot for you. And if you haven’t, you will get to learn about it alongside Agnes as she ventures into this new world.”
All that said, the show can be summarized in just five words, according to Bernstein: “Fighting. Dragons. Love. Family. Closure.”