The Bleeding Class
Directed by Cezar Williams
Presented by Undiscovered Works with Executive Producers Ruth & William Isenberg and Leah S. Abrams at 59E59 Theaters
59 E 59 St., Manhattan, NYC
August 13-September 1, 2024
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Reginald L. Barnes and Tamar Lopez in The Bleeding Class. Photo by Jennifer Dean
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Even in times when there is no public health emergency, it is clear that capitalism concerns itself with human health only insofar as it affects productivity and profit; any doubts to this effect that anyone may have harbored should have been erased in the recent pandemic, amidst open discussions about the levels and demographics of acceptable sacrifices of human life to "the economy." The pandemic also rendered transparent on a national stage–if, again, anyone had any doubts–the ways in which the harmful effects of neoliberal capitalism's exploitation of life and labor fall unequally across hierarchized lines of race, class, gender, and sexuality (which function as structural positions within capitalism itself). In playwright and screenwriter Chisa Hutchinson's terrific play
The Bleeding Class, Adina "Sugar" Moreno (Tamar Lopez), as a Dominican American woman, occupies a doubly dehumanized position under the patriarchal capitalist hierarchy, even as she becomes vital to seeking the cure for a global outbreak of a deadly mutation of the flu virus. The superb production of
The Bleeding Class currently at 59E59 Theaters is part of the second annual AMPLIFY Festival, which spotlights three original works by the same playwright across 59E59's three stages. This year, AMPLIFY features the NYC premieres of a trio of works from the award-winning, NY-based Hutchinson, with
Redeemed and
Amerikin to follow
The Bleeding Class.
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| Tamar Lopez and Vincent Szutenbach in The Bleeding Class. Photo by Jennifer Dean |
The nickname Sugar–which, in juxtaposition with the surname Moreno, plays on "brown sugar"–is a work name, adopted for the sex work in which Sugar has engaged since she was high-school aged. These days, Sugar works for an escort agency, which is how she ended up in the home of the ultra-wealthy Thomas Farraday (Jackson Hayes, seen only in silhouette) while he was dying of the virus, named HXNX. Sugar leaves Faraday's without subsequently becoming ill but with an impressive sum of money. When the play opens, Sugar has come to see a doctor named Wesley Pennington (Reginald L. Barnes) for caution's sake, leading him to begin investigating why she has not been sick after her direct exposure. Farraday's business partner Wyatt Kilgore (also played by Jackson Hayes, a doubling suggestive of a homogenous [white, male] ruling class), meanwhile, is conducting his own investigation: how did Sugar come by so much of Farraday's money? When Kilgore and what seems fair to call a henchman (
Vincent Szutenbach) trail Sugar to her follow-up appointment, Pennington brokers a deal with Kilgore to research Sugar's potentially lifesaving–and potentially valuable–immune system. As the ethnic scapegoating and violence (storied American traditions) rise along with the death toll, will a vaccine or treatment be discovered in time? If the research team is successful, who will actually benefit, and at what cost? And on a personal level, will Sugar's participation help to repair her relationship with her mother?
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| Reginald L. Barnes and Jackson Hayes in The Bleeding Class. Photo by Jennifer Dean |
Sugar's being not only a woman and a person of color but also a sex worker and an immigrant further excludes her from positions of socioeconomic power (an exclusion her financial windfall may mitigate), and as a Black doctor, Pennington shares some of this experience–he is, for instance, the only Black member of the research team at Kilgore's facility–which provides a potential bond for Pennington and Sugar. In the meantime, as a research subject, Sugar's body is still commodified, just by a different (overwhelmingly male-led) industry, and the play calls to mind historical analogues such as Henrietta Lacks. The often problematic history of the medical industry's treatment of people of color (and the impoverished) is arguably encapsulated in a brief moment of distrustful hesitancy by Sugar about the speed of the research results, even though she has been involved from the beginning. This is merely one notable moment in a remarkable performance by Lopez as Sugar, intelligent and independent in the face of a traumatic personal history and an initially concealed desire to reconnect with her mother. Barnes is excellent as Pennington, including in a marvelous dream sequence (one of the play's multiple surprises), peeling back the doctor's layers as he becomes more open around Sugar; Hayes's confident Kilgore is entertainingly execrable; and Szutenbach invests the wordless roles of nurse and heavy (another symbolic doubling?) with personality, and, in the former case, hilarity. Designer Scott Fetterman's projections, including at times delightful shadow puppets designed by Jett Adams, supply (alongside Caroline Eng's sound design) interest to scene changes, offer exposition, and provide backgrounds on a flexible set by Tara Higgins, all enhanced by Maxx Kurzunski's lighting design, which stretches from the flat white of a doctor's office to the colorful strobing of a doctor's subconscious. Deftly synthesizing its multi-generic influences,
The Bleeding Class ensures that you won't be immune to either its many pleasures or its message.
-John R. Ziegler and Leah Richards
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