Reviews and Previews
Pasadena Weekly
Cutting-edge theater
"Bleed Rail" looks at the slaughter of the American Dream
By Carl Kozlowski
Mickey Birnbaum
At its best, theatre is an art form that can make audiences look at the world in entirely new and wildly imaginative ways. And in these days when death and destruction appear constantly on the evening news and millions of Americans are struggling to keep their heads above water amid soaring gas prices, the folks at Pasadena's Theatre @ Boston Court have unveiled their own take on the dark side of the modern American Dream with the world premiere of Mickey Birnbaum's "Bleed Rail."
Directed by Jessica Kubzansky, "Bleed Rail" takes a look at the dreams of twentysomethings by casting a lens on the life of Ryan, a guy who's struggling to keep his sanity and his girlfriend while suffering through the daily grind of a horrific job in a slaughterhouse. Realizing that meat is more valuable to society and his employers than his own life, he engages in a series of decisions that, according to the theater, will ensure that you "never look at steak the same way again."
But there's much more to the "Bleed Rail" experience than merely seeing the play, as the theater is hosting several intriguing events during its run. This Friday night, Boston Court will host "Live Wired" before and after the show, offering the chance to hear new music and share coffee, conversation, goodies and swag bags with other attendees in the 18-25 age range.
After the shows on Sunday and on June 7, a dialogue called "Illuminations" will use the show as the inspiration for a discussion. Dani Bedeau of San Diego State University leads the talk this Sunday, which will focus on the types of people who make up the current U.S. military, while on June 7 Steven Leigh Morris of the LA Weekly will guide the audience through a discussion of the meat industry and how the degrading conditions affect workers.
On Fridays May 25, June 1, 8 and 15, the theater hosts "Late Nite Salon @ The Court," in which the theater becomes a coffee house each night for free post-show coffee, sweets and discussions with the creative people behind the show. Finally, after the shows on May 17 and June 10, the audience is invited to engage in a Q&A with the cast and, after the June 3 performance, playwright Birnbaum will answer audience questions about the show.
"Bleed Rail" runs through June 17 at the Theatre @ Boston Court, 70 N. Mentor Ave., Pasadena. Tickets are $30. For tickets or more information, call (626) 683-6883, or visit www.bostoncourt.com .
Variety
Posted: Mon., Jun. 4, 2007, 3:36pm PT
Bleed Rail
(The Theater @ Boston Court ; 99 seats; $30 top) A Theater @ Boston
Court presentation of a play in two acts by Mickey Birnbaum. Directed
by Jessica Kubzansky.
Ryan - Dennis Flanagan
Keith - Cyrus Alexander
Justin - Josh Clark
Jewel - Lily Holleman
Jim the Hanger - Hugo Armstrong
By TERRY MORGAN
A terrific presentation of an uneven play, Jessica Kubzansky's canny direction, a skillful cast and a viscerally expressive production design combine to make Mickey Birnbaum's "Bleed Rail" shine as much as possible. The show works as a dark comedy, and the first act is full of off-kilter wit and well-drawn characters. Second act, however, awkwardly lurches into portentously symbolic drama, shoehorns in the Iraq war and becomes tedious.
Ryan (Dennis Flanagan) is happy enough with his job at the slaughterhouse, cutting open cows brought to him on a mechanized circuit of hooks, talking about cars over the booming din with his co-worker Justin (Josh Clark) all the while. He shares a place with his friend Keith (Cyrus Alexander), who works at a local fast-food joint, and has tentatively started a relationship with the young, homeless and pregnant Jewel (Lily Holleman). His life changes when a workplace accident temporarily disables him. No longer seen as an able-bodied worker, Ryan finds his entire reality changing for the worse.
Ryan is mostly reactive in this story and, as a result, is more vaguely conceived than the other roles. Flanagan mostly makes the audience forget this through an assured and sympathetic perf, but by the conclusion, Ryan's status as an Everyman figure overshadows the subtleties of Flanagan's acting.
Clark brings a peppery vigor to Justin, and Alexander is wryly amusing as Keith, a guy to whom a 62" TV constitutes a reason to live. Holleman is superb as Jewel, both hilarious and touching. Finally, Hugo Armstrong offers in a tour de force perf as the crazed Jim the Hanger, mixing bellowing bellicosity with moments of graceful delicacy.
Birnbaum is clearly a talented writer, and his scenes in the fast-food restaurant, a tinny Muzak version of "God Bless America" tootling in the background, nicely capture the surreal nature of such places.
Kubzansky brings some clever touches to the production, from having the actors walk the perimeter of the stage as if they themselves were cattle moving inevitably through the slaughterhouse to the shadow of a giant gear projected on the center of the stage, always turning, always grinding.
Susan Gratch's striking set -- a bloodstained floor and backdrop, with a ring of hooks, the titular "bleed rail" hanging above the stage - looms with ominous authority. John Zalewski's sound design, alternately bruising and muted, adds to the potency of the piece.
Sets, Susan Gratch; costumes, Robert Prior; lighting, Jeremy Pivnick; sound, John Zalewski; production stage manager, Rebecca Cohn. Reviewed May 25, 2007. Opened May 12. Runs through June 17. Running time: 2 HOURS, 15 MIN.
Pasadena Star News
Friday, May 18, 2007
"A lot of heart put into 'Bleed Rail'"
By Frances Baum Nicholson, correspondent
There are so many lovely layers to Mickey Birnbaum's brand new play, "Bleed Rail," now at The Theatre at Boston Court in Pasadena, one must step back and work one's way through each one at a time.
Yet, far from being a daunting task, it takes this rather bleak, but compelling, tale of Midwestern small town atrophy and turns it into a larger examination of the human spirit. Still, even on the most superficial level, it has a captivating side, thanks in large part to an ensemble of terrific actors and a production constructed with precision and vision by director Jessica Kubzansky. Essentially, in a small town where the main employer is a slaughterhouse, a group of marginal people find definition in the precisions or imprecisions of their lives.
Ryan works with Justin on the bleed rail of the slaughterhouse, cutting and gutting the cattle hanging from hooks to bleed out as they float by, conveyor-style.
It's a living, but only as safe as the quality of that hanging upon the hooks, and Jim the Hanger hasn't been himself since his wife died.
At the apartment Ryan shares with the self-absorbed Keith, a fast food worker, he meets Jewel, a homeless pregnant girl with a psychotic need not to be alone. Then the baby comes. Then one of the cattle falls. Then, as Ryan clings to the stick his father left him, life unravels and even reality becomes uncertain.
Yet, this can't convey half of what the play has to say. Susan Gratch's industrial set emphasizes man as part of the machinery, down to a ridiculous, mechanized fast food joint. For a play about a slaughterhouse, a lot of the more grotesque aspects are left to the imagination. Not an expose, the play deals more with the struggle for one's soul in the midst of constant violence, and the constant resurgence of hope.
Dennis Flanagan manages to embody the struggle, as the innocent, eventually ravaged Ryan. Cyrus Alexander's flip carelessness as Keith creates essential balance to Ryan's increasing weightiness.
Josh Clark, as the man wearing himself out with hard, even scary labor, becomes an image of an unchanged future, while Hugo Armstrong's Jim the hanger carries elements of every self-medicating middle aged belligerent one can conjure up.
Lily Holleman's somewhat vacant, anxious-to-please Jewel has just enough oddity and just enough reason to leave question marks.
As with many well-written plays, this one needs peeling--like an onion.
Moments will disquiet, and moments may confound. Still, see it with others who love a good intellectual discussion and you will find yourselves with much to talk about, over coffee.
On the other hand, due to the nature of the play, it would be inadvisable to bring children for a whole lot of different reasons.
This work, premiering at The Theatre at Boston Court, is a product of its own play reading festival. Several new scripts will be read later this month, which may eventually morph into productions for future seasons.
Los Angeles Times
A life shattered, and consequences
Certainly, the producers at Boston Court are not averse to taking risks. Consider the theater's current production, "Bleed Rail," a world premiere play about a slaughterhouse worker whose work-related injurysends him careening into indigence.
A "bleed rail" is the railing from which cattle are suspended to "bleed out" before processing. It's here that Ryan (Dennis Flanagan) works under the most grisly and dangerous conditions. (Just note the prolific stage blood.) When a struggling animal makes a break for freedom, Ryan's shoulder is shattered ÷ along with his illusions of self-sufficiency.
Playwright Mickey Birnbaum begins his darkly absurdist drama as a polemic for vegetarianism before branching off into larger, less cohesive themes about the woes of society's underclass and the American involvement in the Iraq war. While it certainly challenges our expectations, the play's frustratingly random tone sometimes seems more the result of dramaturgical lack of expertise than calculation.
John Zalewski's deliberately obtrusive sound design ranges from disorienting clanging to a dimly thrumming musical underscore. To her credit, director Jessica Kubzansky weaves Birnbaum's snippets into whole cloth of a vivid stripe. Flanagan is fittingly stunned as the doomed Ryan, while Lily Holleman rivets as a pregnant waif with a tenacious capacity for survival. A standout among the excellent cast, which includes Cyrus Alexander and Josh Clark, Hugo Armstrong goes gleefully over the top as Ryan's macho, mysterious co-worker ÷ an avenging Fury who hounds Ryan into fatal action.
÷ F.K.F.
"Bleed Rail," Theatre at Boston Court, 70 N. Mentor Ave., Pasadena. 8
p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays. Ends June 17. $15.
(626) 683-6883. www.bostoncourt.org. Running time: 2 hours, 10 minute
Backstage West
Bleed Rail - Pick!
May 17, 2007
By Hoyt Hilsman
Mickey Birnbaum's darkly metaphorical drama about workers in a Midwestern slaughterhouse is stunningly provocative. Transcendent performances from a gifted ensemble and dead-on direction by Jessica Kubzansky make for a memorable evening of theatre.
The setting is bleak and ferocious: the assembly-line killing of cattle, where Ryan (Dennis Flanagan), Justin (Josh Clark), and Jim the Hanger (Hugo Armstrong) work hour after hour eviscerating cows who are hanging on hooks, many in their last twitches of life, others still struggling to survive. These are literal dead-end jobs, but the men have no hope for the future and cling to the slaughterhouse work as their lifelines.
And life outside isn't much better. Keith (Cyrus Alexander) works at a burger joint that feels like a straight shot from the slaughterhouse floor, delivering burgers via a chute that might well be covered with fresh cow blood. When a very pregnant teenage Jewel (Lily Holleman) walks into the burger joint and offers to take her clothes off in exchange for something to eat, an abyss of relationships yawns open.
On the most basic level, Birnbaum's play recounts the horror of the slaughterhouse and the pain, physical and psychological, that slaughterhouse workers surely endure. However, the play quickly ascends to a broader metaphor, as we venture into the moral landscape beyond the slaughterhouse, where violence and cruelty also reign. In Birnbaum's universe, modern society is an extension of the slaughterhouse, where it is not our bodies but our souls that are being eviscerated. It may begin with the culture of the postindustrial carnivore, but it soon expands to a moral killing fields. While there is a message of hope and redemption at the end, the play still paints a bloody prophecy of destruction.
In the hands of less-talented performers and director, this play might strike an impossibly dark note. However, Kubzansky and this very gifted cast underscore the existentially comic predicament of all the characters. Flanagan is a wonderfully believable Everyman as the young idealist trapped in hell, while Clark is vivid and sardonic as his bleed-rail mentor. Alexander is crisply engaging as the hamburger jockey and erstwhile roommate.
Especially marvelous are the performances of Armstrong and Holleman. Armstrong conjures an almost mythical energy as the otherworldly Jim the Hanger, and Holleman is powerful and crudely insouciant as the hopelessly lost teenage girl. Sets by Susan Gratch, costumes by Robert Prior, and sound design by John Zalewski add considerably to this bleakly triumphant production.
Presented by and at Theatre@Boston Court, 70 N. Mentor Ave., Pasadena. Thu.-Sat. 8 p.m., Sun. 2 p.m. May 12-Jun. 17. (626) 683-6883. www.bostoncourt.org.
Lacitybeat.com
Bleed Rail. A young slaughterhouse worker (Dennis Flanagan) drifts through his cramped and perilous life, as co-workers and housemates face equally barren prospects, until Iraq beckons. Mickey Birnbaum"s play could use another, clarifying rewrite in order to unleash the grim power that"s sporadically visible in Jessica Kubzansky"s staging. Boston Court Theatre, 70 N Mentor Av, Pasadena, (626) 683-6883. Bostoncourttheatre.com. Thurs-Sats at 8; Suns at 2. Closes June 17. (DS)
LA Weekly
BLEED RAIL
Behind some lapses of credibility, and with echoes of Upton Sinclair"s novel The Jungle, Mickey Birnbaum's grimly funny new play contains a piercing and darkly beautiful view of killers and prey, in life and the afterlife. Ryan (Dennis Flanagan) carves up beef carcasses along the factory line of a Midwest slaughterhouse. His every move is caught on video, which turns Ryan and his work partner, Justin (Josh Clark), into bloodstained maniacs of efficiency, desperate to keep their jobs.
Meanwhile, Ryan"s childhood friend, would-be filmmaker Keith (Cyrus Alexander), works behind the counter at the local Liberty Burger fast-food outlet, selling "Prairie Rings" and "Land of Plenty" lunch specials. One day, a cow struggles off an airborne hook and falls onto Ryan, crushing his shoulder. Too proud to accept disability payments (one of a few pivotal details that strain believability), impoverished Ryan watches his girlfriend, Jewel (Lily Holleman), sell her baby to an adoption agency and drift toward Keith's bed and his amateur porn enterprise. Betrayed by many and with few remaining options, Ryan heads off to the war in Iraq. In an extraneous if not intrusive scene, Keith reports back from Baghdad with his videotape of Ryan in the crossfire. Credence aside, it's as though Birnbaum doesn't believe how seamlessly the mere idea of Ryan joining the Army complements the slaughterhouse, its meat hooks and "almost dead" creatures that encapsulate Birnbaum's view of modern America. The scene from Iraq is just rhetorical in an otherwise poetical play. Still, Birnbaum's repartee is as magnificent as his splashes of surrealism, which include a fantasia of former butchers tenderly putting creatures back together, returning their lives. Jessica Kubzansky stages a viscerally charged production in which mimed sides of beef seem to materialize, possibly because we see real red liquid dripping off the workers' rubber gloves. The productions also boasts the tightest ensemble I"ve seen in this theater, even if there's not a Latino, Asian or black meatpacker depicted on the stage, when the industry is dominated by nonwhite workers. Hugo Armstrong is particularly striking as the diabolically deranged "hanger" Jim, who goads Ryan to join the Army. The tech elements are unimpeachable, from Susan Gratch's blood-smeared set of chutes and hooks to John Zalewski's eerily pulsing sound design that's something between a far-away disco and a heartbeat fading into silence.
THEATRE @ BOSTON COURT, 70 N. Mentor Ave., Pasadena; Thurs.-Sat., 8
p.m.; Sun., 2 p.m.; thru June 17. (818) 683-6883. (Steven Leigh Morris)
ACCESSIBLY LIVE OFF-LINE
(Vol. 12-No 21-Week of May 21st, 2007)
The Theatre @ Boston Court presents the world premier of Mickey Birnbaum's BLEED RAIL, a surreal tale of one man's place in his own world through his job is a slaughterhouse.
In a midsize yet unnamed Midwestern town, Ryan (Dennis Flanagan) is employed as a lowly worker at the local slaughterhouse. Justin (Josh Clark) a coworker, is more devoted to his job as the two work along each other performing the unruly deed of butchering cattle for meat. Justin lives with a roommate Keith (Cyrus Alexander) who is also in the "meat" business, but on the opposite end as a counterman at a sterile no-frills fast food joint. Then two different people enter their lives; a young yet pregnant woman Jewel (Lily Hollerman) who comes from a mysterious past, and a man known as Jim the Hanger (Hugo Armstrong) who was once employed at the slaughterhouse. Ryan also suffered the recent loss of his father, but that isn't his sole issue. This is a story of an American dream that turned into an afterthought, and the inner hopes of three people that winds up hopeless--all in the name of somebody's steak and hamburgers!
This is a play that can be labeled as the post modern answer to another story about life in a slaughterhouse; Upton Sinclair's The Jungle. Unlike in those days where the quality of meat was questionable, the lives and post-lives of its workers and others is just as foggy. As far as the staging in this production, the set design by Kyle Feely with assistance by Maggie Goddard is just as sterile looking, complete with plenty of chrome and stainless steel. This enhances the overall mood of this play; all of the somberness with plenty of grit!
Directed by Jessica Kubzansky, BLEED RAIL is a choice cut! Of course, don't take the child's portion because this play is for mature audiences! So fire up the barbecue on full 'cuz this show is very "meaty" and is minus the fat! Chow down!
BLEED RAIL, presented and performs at The Theatre @ Boston Court, 70 North Mentor (at Boston Court), Pasadena, until June 17th. Showtimes are Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays at 8:00 PM, and Sunday afternoons at 2:00 PM. Reservations and information, call (626) 683-6883. Visit the website at http://www.bostoncourt.org
TalkingBroadway.com
Bleed Rail
Dennis Flanagan and Josh Clark
A "bleed rail," we learn in Mickey Birnbaum's new play, is a slaughterhouse term. When the cows are killed, they are hung on the "bleed rail" to bleed out. Sometimes the slaughterer does not do his job properly and the animal remains alive, kicking and thrashing out the last throes of its life on the bleed rail. (Do not plan to go out for a nice juicy steak after seeing this play.) In Bleed Rail, we follow the story of a slaughterhouse worker who, after suffering a debilitating injury on the line, is somewhat similarly left to die by society.
The play establishes Ryan's life before the injury. Ryan likes to carry around a stick - the only thing his recently deceased father left him. He and his co-worker have shouted conversations about music, cars, sex and sometimes philosophy as they try to be heard over the din of the slaughterhouse, seemingly indifferent to their bloody work. Ryan shares an apartment with Keith, who works at fast food joint Liberty Burger (home of the "Land of Plenty Special"), maxes out his credit card on home electronics, and hopes to make it big as a porn video director. And things start to change when they meet Jewel, a homeless pregnant teenager whose quirky optimism lands her some space in Keith and Ryan's apartment.
It isn't the sort of life anyone would dream of, but Ryan seems content with it - until an accident at work destroys everything. Unable to keep working, he sits on the couch all the time, hopped up on Percocet. And this is the real meat of the play - the things that go through Ryan's mind when what little happiness he might have had is taken away from him.
Bleed Rail is billed as a "dark comedy," but it's actually more of a tragedy with some funny bits in it. When broke Jewel first appears on the scene at Liberty Burger, Keith offers her some free "Prairie Rings" if she'll strip for him. The scene gets laughs, as the very-pregnant girl has to put her leg on a nearby rail to unhook her shoes, and subsequently tries to wriggle out of her panties. But there's nothing particularly funny about a pregnant teenager who has to take off her clothes in order to get some lousy fast food. There's a lot of that sort of thing in Bleed Rail: scenes that are funny, but really aren't.
The cast is uniformly solid, with particularly stand-out work by Lily Holleman as Jewel. When she asks, "What will it take?" to get what she needs, it's very clear that this girl is willing to do anything and won't hold a grudge about it. Holleman's Jewel is simultaneously vulnerable and in need of protection, but she's also a realist - and she's mesmerizing to watch whenever she's on stage. Hugo Armstrong is also memorable as "Jim the Hanger," an almost mythical slaughterhouse worker whose very reputation frightens everyone else on the line.
Birnbaum's writing is particularly good when it comes to honest, realistic dialogue between people who know each other well, and director Jessica Kubzansky keeps everyone talking over each other as they should. Susan Gratch's minimalist set (with an unmoving rail mounted with hooks always visible above the proceedings), Jeremy Pivnick's harsh lighting, and John Zalewski's slaughterhouse sounds all keep things suitably creepy without any carcasses actually being brought on stage.
Things get a bit problematic with Birnbaum's script in the second act. The explanation for why Ryan doesn't go on disability is pretty weak, and the play never offers an explanation for why he doesn't try to get work at Liberty Burger. The play then takes a huge left turn to show us what Ryan ultimately decides to do with his life, and the script rushes over some rather important plot points to get there. The result is an ending that doesn't quite seem to gel with the rest of the play, and a coda that, while effective, seems forced.
Bleed Rail runs at The Theatre @ Boston Court through June 17. For reservations and information, see www.bostoncourt.com.
The Theatre @ Boston Court presents Bleed Rail by Mickey Birnbaum. Directed by Jessica Kubzansky. Scenic Design Susan Gratch; Lighting Design Jeremy Pivnick; Costume Design Robert Prior; Sound Design John Zalewski; Properties Robyn Taylor; Production Stage Manager Rebecca Cohn; Associate Producer Joe Foster; Assistant Director Sheila Vand; Casting Michael Donovan, CSA; Publicist Aldrich & Associates; Key Art Christopher Komuro.
Cast:
Ryan - Dennis Flanagan
Keith - Cyrus Alexander
Justin - Josh Clark
Jewel - Lily Holleman
Jim the Hanger - Hugo Armstrong
Photo by Ed Krieger
ReviewPlays.com and Entertainment Today
5/20/07
TICKETHOLDERS
by Travis Michael Holder
Bleed Rail
Theatre @ Boston Court
The world premiere of Mickey Birnbaum"s bleakly captivating Bleed Rail, which offers a scary but accurately skewed view of the death of the American dream, is guaranteed to bring another set of honors to the already award-heavy Theatre @ Boston Court by year"s end. If there"s one defining thing to be said about this groundbreaking theatrical complex as it continues to careen cheekily into its fourth season, it"s that its choices are continuously fearless, its "deciders" fiercely determined to bring challenging new work to our community without once settling for something safe.
In the arresting world premiere of Birnbaum"s haunted modernday anti-epic, a young man (Dennis Flanagan) lives a nightmarish dead-end existence in a midwestern heartland town dominated by heavy industry and strip malls, well described by one of his trapped characters as the "asshole of the world." Although the program also tells us it"s a place with "plenty of nothing to do," Ryan consumes most of his time desperately trying to hang onto his obviously non-unionized job working the line at the local slaughterhouse with his bizarrely cryptic friend Justin (Josh Clark), racking up the hours and overtime eviscerating deadÑand often not yet deadÑcattle, which hang twitching from large horrific hooks on the Bleed Rail conveyor belt looming above them.
As some of the less fortunate terrorized cows fight for their lives, so do Ryan and Justin, as one small breakdown in this repetitive assembly line of death could cost them their livelihood as the foremen watch nearby. Although the carcasses themselves are gratefully though graphically pantomimed for the audience, massive amounts of their spilled blood splatters everywhere (which makes me wonder if the Boston Court got a deal by purchasing stage blood by the gallon) as the desensitized workers" hideously menacing butcher knives tear into the often still convulsing tissue under Jeremy Pivnik"s harsh lighting and accompanied by John Zalewski"s bone-chilling sound design of ripping flesh and failing heartbeats.
It isn"t much better for Ryan"s roommate and childhood best friend Keith (Cyrus Alexander), who mans the counter at a patriotic-themed heartland fastfood joint where a tinny God Bless America is continuously piped into the restaurant. As Keith drones repetitively over his microphone to the kitchen for orders of Liberty Burgers and Prairie Fries, which eerily echo Ryan"s existence in the slaughterhouse as they descend in to-go bags from above traveling along a high industrial chute, Keith hands these happy meals to his customers with a blandly insincere "Have a free day," dreaming all the while of becoming a porn director ("I"m good at fucking," he relates with pride and great sincerity).
Watching the dastardly and darkly humorous metaphor of Birnbaum"s amazing Bleed Rail would be hard to describe as a fun night out, but nonetheless, it"s one of the best productions offered in Los Angeles so far this year. Director Jessica Kubzansky is at the top of her well-appreciated game here and her actors simply could not be better. Flanagan, Armstrong and Clark are stunning as the three workers whose life has nowhere to go, their sorrowfully unfulfilled lives made even more apparent by the work of Lily Holleman as Jewel, a lost and homeless waif who enters their lives when she agrees to show her giggie to Keith in return for a Liberty Burger she can"t pay for, staying on to turn the guys" home lifeÑsuch as it isÑupside-down.
Hugo Armstrong is also horrendously disturbing as Jim the Hanger, a quirky, ominous fellow slaughterhouse employee who falls somewhere between Leatherface and Thor Johnson in Plan Nine from Outer Space. At the end of the season, this uniformly beguiling cast could easily win every Ensemble Cast honor our award-happy city has to offer to actors in place of a livable wage.
Blood Rail is an all but perfect production with, for me, only two small visual disappointments. Susan Gratch"s splendidly inventive, blood-splattered industrial set design is topped by a (presumably) authentic bleed rail towering ominously above the action on the versatile Boston Court stage, a fascinating network of cables, exposed gears and, of course, that bad dream-inducing series of strategically placed cattle hooks. Sadly, however, it doesn"t ever move. Following the rail visually before the show and watching the actors throughout the piece exit from scenes in a slow, circular zombiewalk around the stage while staring up at the gore-dripping hooks, I was sure we were in for a typically arresting Boston Court treat by the end, but the rail remained stationary, never grinding loudly into action as I"d expected.
Also, in a late scene where Keith narrates to Jewel and Justin the documentary footage he shot of Ryan"s rather predictable death after he enlists in the Army and goes off to carve up even more helpless and innocent victims in Iraq in the name of another kind of satiation, I was surprised the imaginative Kubzansky missed showing the audience his broken body swinging from those creepy but surprisingly underused hooks that so symbolically govern the character"s limited choices in life.
I wonder how many people attending the indelible Bleed Rail will suffer a couple of sleepless nights thinking about the ever-encroaching Jerry Springeresque state of American life in a country constantly devolving into a moral quagmireÑand left to get worse at the hands of our crooked, greedy politician system and the out of control cowboy madman leading the pack of vultures stripping the world of all honor and ethics in the quest for dominance.
If nothing else is accomplished here, I"ll just bet more than a handful of patrons will attempt a vegetarian diet after seeing Bleed Rail, at least one small step toward a better and fairer world. Personally, I"ll never quite look at a hamburger the same way again.
Bleed Rail plays through June 17 at the Theatre @ Boston Court, 70 N. Mentor Av., Pasadena; for tickets, call 626.683.6883.
* * *
TRAVIS MICHAEL HOLDER has been writing about LA theatre since 1987 and as an actor has received LA Drama Critics Circle, Drama-Logue, ReviewPlays.com, and four Maddy Awards; NAACP, GLAAD, and five LA Weekly nominations; and numerous regional honors, including being up for Washington, DC"s Helen Hayes honors as Oscar Wilde in Oscar & Speranza. A veteran of six Broadway shows, as well as numerous national and international tours, he traveled in 2002-2003 playing his idol Tennessee Williams in Lament for the Moths, including a run at New Orleans" Tennessee Williams Literary Festival, where he returned this year to perform in An Ode to Tennessee. As a writer, five of his plays have been produced in LA and his first, Surprise, Surprise, is about to hit the festival circuit as a feature film with Travis appearing in a leading role. His first novel, Waiting for Walk, was completed in 2005, put in a desk drawer, and the ever-slothful, ever-deluded, ever-entitled Travis can"t figure out why no one has magically found it yet, taken it out and published the goddam thing. www.travismichaelholder.com.
Blogcritics.org
Theater Review: Bleed Rail Is a Bloody Mess
Written by Purple Tigress
Published May 29, 2007
Part of Breaking Legs in Lalaland
Mickey Birnbaum's Bleed Rail, making its world premiere at the Theatre@Boston Court in Pasadena, California, is a testament to a liberal bleeding heart writer, hemorrhaging with good intentions. Good intentions alone are never enough and this patient needs intensive editing to stitch up the messy subplots and themes into a healthy message play.
In the program notes, Birnbaum states he was inspired to write this play by a 2001 article in Mother Jones by Eric Schlosser. The article, called "The Chain Never Stops," is written with Upton Sinclair in mind. We know this because the beginning pull quote is from the book The Jungle.
In the magazine article, Schlosser means to expose the indignities that the meatpacking companies pile upon their employees, three quarters of whom Schlosser claims are immigrants. While Sinclair wrote about matters of sanitation and work conditions, Schlosser writes about crafty legal maneuvers as well as devastating injuries including those that weren't well understood in Sinclair's day Ñ repetitive motion injuries.
Birnbaum seems to nod his head toward both Sinclair and Schlosser. Using sounds and motions and lots of red stage blood, director Jessica Kubzansky conveys the goriness of the work. The chain never stops because the workers, Ryan (Dennis Flanagan) and Justin (Josh Clark), aren't allowed to stop or hold up the line, threatened with layoffs. This is very much in line with Schlosser's article.
Yet Birnbaum meanders off into contemplations about poor white trash girls like Jewel (Lily Holleman) who get pregnant in the back of an SUV and use sex to substitute for rent, about entrepreneurial minimal-wage workers like Keith (Cyrus Alexander) who supplement their income by making amateur porn to sell on the Internet, and about the anger of one man who loses his dignity and his sometime-girlfriend when he's injured on the job.
Although there is a passing mention of co-workers who are Latino, this production and the script focuses on poor white workers and yet veers off again from the sudden wealth of a porn maker to violent confrontations with an indignant boyfriend of one of the porn stars, hallucinations of a drugged out worker and the sudden physical rehabilitation of all the characters so the two men can go to Iraq. And of course, we get to know what happens in Iraq to Ryan and Keith and it isn't good.
In a way, the quick recovery of Ryan from his work-related injury seems a betrayal to Schlosser's article. Schlosser makes it clear that the physical outlook for these people is bleak. Birnbaum, like a miracle of TV, quickly glosses over this so he can move the action to Iraq and get an anti-war message in. And that's not even the ending there. Tacked on is a scene in a heavenly factory where cows are given back life, literally stitched together and our cast are all back together to see those cows given life.
Birnbaum's play is much like stitching a dead cow together after it has been butchered. The result isn't one cohesive, living, breathing piece, but a horrific bloody mess that has good edible parts that we're not allowed to stew and chew on intellectually because we're distracted by the crazy stitch work that only barely holds this thing together.