Blood of the Lamb at B Street Theatre is the Show of the Moment

Blood of the Lamb, by Arlene Hutton, is a Special Engagement event at B Street Theatre, running only through August 4th.

Dana Brooke as Nessa, Elisabeth Nunziato as Val. Photo Courtesy of B Street Theater.

When the Supreme Court ruling overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, the associated complications of the contradicting and untested laws set in place at the time, and enacted ever since, resulted in a myriad of questions about choice.  Those questions, about which choices a woman can make, and which are ‘chosen’ for her, lead to this tense thriller, set in a Dallas airport. Here, a pregnant woman, Nessa, finds herself detained following an in-flight “medical incident”. She also finds herself up against an unexpected adversary: an attorney assigned to represent Nessa's unborn child - a circumstance that no one in the Texas legal bureaucracy has any experience managing. 

The next hour or so sees the dialogue surrounding this choice under the microscope.  Set on a spare stage, with only small gray table and two chairs making up the bare conference room, the conflict takes center stage and  takes us on a morality-questioning roller coaster ride.  There are spoilers that won’t be given here, but Nessa’s situation becomes increasingly surreal and complex, almost to the point of absurdity – despite the fact that, as dystopian as it might seem, it is not really that far removed from reality.

Dana Brooke and Elisabeth Nunziato are very capable actors who portray two women who are literally and figuratively on opposite sides of the table.  Their performances ground the story, giving it weight and realism.  Brooke as Nessa is both sympathetic and determined, and we are immediately on her side.  Nunziato, as Val, is representative of the ‘villainous state’.  Her performance is incredibly effective at portraying the impersonal nature of bureaucracy, while at the same time subtly hinting at empathy.

Blood of the Lamb, by Arlene Hutton, is a Special Engagement event at B Street Theatre, running only through August 4th. It is a one-act play with no intermission lasting only 65 minutes. Former Artistic Director Buck Busfield commissioned it in 2022 before his retirement. It was specifically written for Brooke and Nunziato. Lyndsay Burch, B Street’s current Artistic Director and CEO, guided the play as director through its development, including its first performance at the Valdez Theatre Conference in Alaska in 2023. From there, it met the qualifications to participate in the Edinburgh Fringe with three thousand other acts in the summer festival. Blood of the Lamb had over fifty performances in Edinburgh. It received a five-star review from the UK newspaper, The Telegraph. In February and March 2024, it played at the Adelaide Fringe Festival in Australia and won the top prize, the Adelaide Critics Circle Award. 

B Street Theatre has every right to be proud of this accomplishment. Each character’s situation unfolds clearly and at a pace that never lets the audience's minds wander. Again, without giving too much away, the laws cited during the play are real…in Texas. The papers that Val (the lawyer) shuffles on stage, seemingly just paper props, are actual documents pertinent to the story and downloaded from State of Texas government sites. This was revealed in a talk-back session with the actors and director following a recent performance. 

While Brooke and Nunziato are individual gems of the B Street stage, together, with Lyndsay Burch’s thoughtful direction and the powerful script by Arlene Hutton, they tell this tale with the force and elegance of an award-winning storytelling team, which they now are, many times over.

Blood of the Lamb runs at B Street Theatre through August 4th and is recommended for ages 16 and up. Tickets can be purchased at this link or by calling the B Street Box Office at (916) 443-5300