Wild Nights with Emily

A pair of decently evocative performances by Shannon and Ziegler (in tandem with their youthful counterparts) can't liven a dull and confused telling of Dickinson's story; the (deliberately) anachronistic telling is an intriguing idea, but Olnek can't successfully mesh her modern, progressive gaze with era appropriate characterisations which makes it difficult to connect with the meat of the drama. Nevertheless a cautiously interesting misfire.

Olnek set out to eviscerate the image of Dickinson as "nutty recluse." She doesn't merely replace it with her own contemporary ironical-lesbian brand of nuttiness, but also reveals how the image itself was crafted by the grasping hands of the heteropatriarchy even as Dickinson lived. Molly Shannon and Susan Ziegler play their chemistry to great effect, in joyfully silly costumes. The acting and structure have a strong whiff of the stage, but it works.