Theater Review: Bleed Rail Is a Bloody Mess

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 — 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.

Article Author: Purple Tigress

Former theater critic for the LA Weekly and Los Angeles Times . For the last five years, an editing slave at a dot-com but recently laid off. Currently an under-employed freelance writer and artist.

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