A Murder of Crows satirizes a family struck down by the toxic winds of pollution. In a world where the air’s “mustardy”, and the ocean is so polluted it looks like a bowl of custard, young Susannah reels from the death of her father, killed under a pile of radioactive chicken droppings. With her brother slowly turning into a statue in the garden and fed up with the rest of her greedy, vulgar family, Susannah finally follows her dead father’s advice and leaves to live with the crows.
“Eighty loopy minutes long, A Murder of Crows is containable in size, but joyously chaotic in substance, structure, story, and style; it’s like opening a wristwatch box and finding one of Dali’s melted jobs inside.” – The Village Voice
“Using language as beautiful and grotesque as the Old Testament, The Book of Mormon, and the works of L. Ron Hubbard, Wellman’s stories, of course, take place in America, a place best suited for extremism and violent beauty.” – The Portland Mercury
“Wellman paint(s) the denizens of a Capra-like Midwestern hamlet as Goya-like grotesqueries who are just as complicit in America’s forthcoming fatted demise as they are victims of it… The playwright’s startling visual metaphors are resonant.” – Time Out Chicago
Murder grabs hold of you from its opening lines, and very rarely gives you the opportunity to let go.” – The Yale Herald