The Woman Behind The Most Hated Play In America

​Every night, Catherine Russell puts on a wig, picks up a gun, and thwarts the logic of Yelp and the Internet.

When you walk in to see the Off-Broadway play Perfect Crime — the longest-running production in New York City history — it seems like you're in for a straightforward crime thriller. The stage is set up like an office in an old detective story. There are big wood bookshelves, an old Persian rug. Then the play begins.

You see a man sitting in the office listening to a reel-to-reel recorder. Then, a woman barges onto the stage. She's wearing a wig, but you can't tell if you're supposed to know it's a wig or not. You don't have much time to wonder because she immediately pulls out a gun and shoots the man. Many times.

And so begins probably the most bewildering couple hours of theater you'll ever see.

If you look up Perfect Crime on Yelp, the reviews are brutal. They include comments like: "First, the pros. The seats have ample leg room. The set is not bad, for a one-set play. That's it. That's everything good about this show."

Or, "At the end of the play the audience was so stunned that we didn't know we were supposed to clap until one of the actors took a bow. The applause was then muted, out of pitty [sic], and mixed with laughter as we realized this awful experience was over."

Yelp reviews are not a pleasant part of the internet. But even if Yelp reviews, or online reviews generally, can be awful, they're also powerful. Bad Yelp reviews can destroy a business.

So it's crazy that Perfect Crime — something so hated online — keeps surviving. Particularly because it's a play — it relies on new people going to see it again and again.

On this week's episode of Reply All, how does Perfect Crime magically exist outside the laws of Yelp and the universe? The first clue comes when you meet the star of the play, Catherine Russell.

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