Interludes

VIEWPOINTS – No one puts baby in the corner: Feminism writ large in BLOOD OF THE LAMB and MEDEA RE-VERSED

• By drediman
• October 10, 2024
• No Comments

Over the past week, I had the chance to catch a pair of impassioned if flawed Off-Broadway productions that depicted strong women dealing with having their rights aggressively stripped from them. As per usual, below are my thoughts.

BLOOD OF THE LAMB
Occasional Drawl Productions (in association with Harbor Stage Company) at 59E59 Theaters
Through October 20

First up at Off-Broadway’s 59E59 Theaters is Blood of the Lamb (RECOMMENDED) by Arlene Hutton. Presented by Occasional Drawl Productions in association with Harbor Stage Company, the new play — which unfolds in real time — is a mostly absorbing two-hander that dramatizes a nightmarish “what if” scenario in which a woman’s right to control decisions regarding her own body are emphatically taken away. Taken at face value as a psychological thriller, the compactly-written play — which unfolds in real time over 70-minutes — does a decent job of steadily escalating tensions and anxiety levels by tantalizingly dropping tidbits along the way. Make no mistake, however, Blood of the Lamb is political drama through and through, using an extreme —albeit somewhat implausible — situation to make an argument for pro-choice abortion rights. Indeed, the play makes no pretenses about which side of the divide it falls, despite some scintillating debate-driven exchanges between the two characters — a pregnant woman mysteriously detained in a Texas airport and a brash court-appointed attorney — sprinkled throughout. The performances by Meredith Garretson and Kelly McAndrew are excellent. Both have a terrific grasp of their characters, and each brings contrasting qualities that bring much needed texture to Hutton’s potentially one-dimensional script. Also worth commending is director Margot Bordelon, who stages the play with clear-eyed naturalism, as if to say — yes, what you see before you is well within the realm of possibility.

MEDEA RE-VERSED
A Red Bull Theatre and Bedlam production at The Sheen Center for Thought and Culture
Through October 20

Then there’s Medea Re-Versed (RECOMMENDED), Luis Quintero’s potent rap / hip hop retelling of the Greek tragedy by Euripides. First staged this summer at the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival, the show arrives in New York at the Sheen Center for Thought and Culture in a co-production between Red Bull Theater and Bedlam, two Off-Broadway theater companies known for bringing visceral immediacy to their productions of the classics. Quintero’s introduction of the rap vernacular brings an elemental quality to the proceedings, particularly as it relates to Medea’s immense rage against the harsh injustice of being thoroughly degraded and stripped of all human dignity — primarily by the men in her life. Suffice to say, she’s pushed to the very ends of her wits. Especially dynamic are the show’s lineup of slicing rap battles, during which the title character retaliates with everything she’s got, eventually proving what people are capable of when their basic human rights are put in serious jeopardy. Compact and forcefully eloquent, these one-on-one conflicts prove to be the heart of the piece. The work isn’t perfect, however. Besides Medea, the work’s other characters register — almost comically so — as mere caricatures who are especially inconsequential in the wake of the tragic heroine’s deep well of rage. But this is neither here nor there — Sarin Monae West in the title role is ferocity incarnate, and a show unto herself. It’s a volcanic performance that, like Medea herself, practically engulfs the entire production in flames.