Theatre Review: Bloodletting

Bloodletting

A Mermaids Production

The Byre, 26/02/25

Written and directed by Ami Melville

Produced by Turner Prewitt

Review by Lexie Dykes

Bloodletting, written and directed by Ami Melville, is an ambitious play, attempting to stage a post-apocalyptic-Mid-West-crop-diseased-70s-style-slasher-horror at the humble Byre, with quite a quick production turnaround. Set in, yes, this kind of post-apocalyptic-Mid-West-crop-diseased-70s-style world of Mr and Mrs Kittery’s farm, we meet the couple, played convincingly by Hannah Doran and Buster van der Geest (who sounded a bit like Jimmy Stewart, which I loved), and Jenny Hale, played sensitively by Elise Siddiqui. She’s a mother asking them to take her and her three daughters in. It’s a promising set-up; the intrusion of a unit into a setting cut off from everyone and everything is a classic and solid source of tension in a lot of horror.

For being in a pretty high-stakes situation (the end of the world happened), the characters strangely do quite little for a long time. It’s a contemplative play. Characters contemplate. Which means monologues. Generally, they are performed very well, by Siddiqui, for example, and they provide us with more psychological insight into its central figures. The post-apocalyptic play has little to do with anything ‘post’. These characters are haunted by their pasts. This is a really fascinating idea. She effectively captures their despair at not being able to make sense of their memories, themselves or their familial relationships; they’re in a kind of purgatory. But this also means that its narrative can feel stilted, as if it’s not quite sure it knows where it’s going or what needs to happen ‘now’. The play is at its most compelling when it is rooted in the present, though. My mind jumps to the moment where Nellie (Anya Tockman) sings a creepy nursery-rhyme song before being terrified by the ghost of Fern (Sophie Rose Jenkins), who we see creepily emerge in blood from the corn rows. The ghosts of the married neighbours Jack and Isabel (Charley Beck and Heather Tiernan) are also at their best as a good and evil angel duo passing witty comment on what action is happening in the immediate moment, rather than when they are lamenting these characters’ moral dilemmas, flaws and feelings.

Ensemble work between the cast is strong, but some more varied and intentional blocking would have helped longer scenes sustain energy. Aimless wandering is always distracting from what was well-delivered through voice. Lighting tech (Ava Pegg-Davies) was nicely done, especially the final strobe murder sequences helping to make on-stage deaths a little less clumsy. Costume and makeup (Fatima Krida and Anna Guest) were also visually striking, especially with the number of bloodstains.

There is something of the performative utterance to all the characters’ dialogue, as if speaking things into existence is the play’s conscious choice of action: they ‘promise’ they are good or that they can ‘forgive’, and they frequently declare things. Jenny incessantly analyses herself: ‘I am a mother, and I am alone’. I can’t work out if these reveal characters tormented by vulnerability, identity crises and breaking familial bonds attempting to forge a sense of agency in a world they cannot control, or whether it’s simply too much tell and not enough show. The interpersonal relationships, the most interesting charge to Melville’s drama, are not always visibly externalised but are discussed at length, meaning shouting matches and axe-murders don’t always feel like logical climaxes to any tension we have actually seen played out between the characters. For the rest of the first act, we don’t really see the Kitterys again. Maybe it’s purposeful to keep them all separate and disconnected as some of the characters desire and as others fear. This means conversations between Margo (played with angst and apathy-turned-anguish by Lila Paterson) and Henry (later revealed to be a ghost in an effective narrative twist, played earnestly by Elliot Reed) are especially interesting because they hint at threat, at the potential for these familial separations to collapse. The Byre stage is separated into two, with the interior and exterior settings divided by a central doorframe, amplifying the play’s interest in difference. The set design and use of props (Clara Curtis) are perfect. The Byre doesn’t ever feel vacuous, and the attention to detail is wonderful. I can’t imagine how much work went into hand-making those bits of corn, but it was well worth it.

Bloodletting is a really commendable effort by a large cast and crew, and its bold and gruesome ending made for an entertaining watch. This play tackles a lot. There’s a supernatural framework, a Christian framework, and a structuralist framework—the characters are obsessed with binary oppositions: good/bad, living/dead, pure/damned etc. Perhaps focusing on one would allow all of Melville’s interesting ideas on crises to be expressed with the little more clarity, detail, and space they deserve.