'White City Murder': New production brings back pre-pandemic Asaykwee musical
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Gray box at black box: Ben Asaykwee and Claire Wilcher Five years ago, in a country far away (it seems) from the present, just before COVID was on everybody's tongue and in the air they breathed, "White City Murder" debuted at the Phoenix Theatre , which is now finishing its 40th-season celebration in a performing-arts home with "Cultural Centre" formally added to the place's name. On Friday night, a season-crowning production of Ben Asaykwee's virtuoso musical fantasy on the legend of H.H. Holmes opened. It's focused on Holmes' nefarious activity around the 1893 Chicago world's fair, which itself was a virtuoso fantasy of scientific and purported social progress, embodied in its white architecture. The pseudonymous Holmes was a 19th-century serial murderer (a side effect of his specialty as a con man and swindler) who established scary residence near the site of the thronged Columbian Exposition (the fair's formal name). His complicated