Blood of the Lamb

Inspired by the US Supreme Court ruling which overturned the Roe v Wade case, the backstory  for this play is the plight of a young pregnant woman who collapsed on a plane mid-flight. It was diverted Texas; she was offloaded and sent to a hospital where she learns that her baby has died. She is discharged, still wearing the hospital wrist band, exhausted, overwrought and confused, stranded without her luggage and identification, to find herself in an almost surreal conversation with a lawyer who has been appointed to represent the unborn dead foetus.  The solicitor engages in increasingly difficult phone conversations while trying to find the right legal course of action where the regulations about the woman’s state are being made (and apparently arbitrarily changed) by committees made up entirely of men.

We watch the two women almost unable to communicate amidst legal precedents, administrative madness, and moral obligation to humanity. Dana Brooke and Elisabeth Nunziato give a nuanced portrayal of the characters as we learn more about them during their increasingly fraught interaction.

The sharp dialogue becomes Kafkaesque in its darker moments but is lightened by hints of Catch22 and Yes Minister.

While at one level, this is a tale of one young woman who becomes a pawn in an unthinking documentation farce, it could apply to any disenfranchised or vulnerable party at the mercy of a large committee-bound bureaucracy governed by rules.

Bureaucrats should be squirming in their seats.

Blood of the Lamb is showing at the Courtyard of Curiosities at the Migration Museum until March 17, 2024. ****