Some topical, up-to-the-minute plays are drawn from yesterday’s news. Some forecast, presciently or not, tomorrow’s news. And others are seemingly pulled from the live news conference we saw two hours before heading over to the theater. Arlene Hutton’s powerful Blood of the Lamb, somehow or other, appears to have been devised and written yesterday, today, and tomorrow.
The play premiered at the 2023 Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and was also performed at the 2024 Adelaide Fringe Festival. It was originally commissioned by B Street Theatre in Sacramento, although 59E59 is presenting the U.S. premiere. Which suggests that Blood of the Lamb couldn’t have been written yesterday afternoon or tomorrow morning. But the events do seem to match what has been coming out of Michigan and Georgia over the last 72 hours. A program note states:
Time & Place: Next week. A room in Dallas, TX
The action takes place in a limbo from which there appears to be no escape, a drab, windowless industrial meeting (or interrogation) room in the bowels of an airport. Nessa (Meredith Garretson), disoriented, out-of-place, and with one of those plastic hospital wristbands peeking out under her the wrist of her sweater, is shepherded in by Val (Kelly McAndrew), who is so officious-looking that we might immediately glean that she is an attorney. A Texas attorney of the God-fearing variety, and clearly adversarial.
What could possibly go wrong?
It turns out that Nessa’s non-stop from LAX (safe) to JFK (safe) was diverted to DAL (not safe) by a medical emergency. Nessa’s medical emergency. The baby was lost, but Texas—which seems (in the play, and out of the play too) to be making up and refining new laws tailored to suit their purposes—claims the corpse of the dead fetus as a citizen of the state of Texas and decrees that it cannot be removed from the womb until the mother goes into labor. Regardless of whether Nessa lives through the process.
No exit, indeed.
Playwright Hutton (whose prior effort at 59E59, According to the Chorus, was in a significantly more lighthearted vein) and director Margot Bordelon keep the pressure up throughout the 80-minute discussion, greatly abetted by the performers. Garretson is exceptional as the traveler, expressing a relatively calm and level-headed demeanor as she begins to realize the state-mandated trap within which she has been caged and only gradually expresses the desperation of her situation.
McAndrew, as her antagonist, has a somewhat more difficult time of it—although it is unclear whether the issue is that of the actor, the director, or the playwright. Val is drawn as one of those fiftyish blonde Texas lawyers with five children, stuck with the “difficult” cases while the state officials and “the senator” are blithely ducking for cover. The character has a somewhat problematic backstory, too, which provides contrast to the situation at hand but borders on what might be considered convenient dramaturgy. Yes, you can interrupt this severe Texas interrogation by having Val pick up her cellphone to field treacly-sweet calls from her children and husband (who, of course, turns out to be a handful); but it can be hard on the actor. So too are the moments in which she has to comically struggle to recharge her laptop and then also recharge her phone. So let’s credit McAndrew with keeping up her end of the conversation, despite some less than artful writing.
Blood of the Lamb is a powerful play with a powerful and relevant message for today. It’s hard to say, though, how it would fare in Texas or Florida or Georgia or Arkansas or Missouri or….
Blood of the Lamb opened September 23, 2024, at 59E59 and runs through October 20. Tickets and information: 59e59.org
