by D. Jette~

When people asked me what kind of play I was going to be reviewing over the weekend I told them ‘a Katrina drama’ without even pausing to coin the term.  Most people understood instantly what I meant, despite that such a label has no relevance to the actual content of a play, only the setting.  Was it going to be a depressing portrait of suffering and redemption?  I hoped not, because that sounded boring. Lucky for me, after actually attending the Moving Arts’ world premiere of Blood and Thunder at Hyperion Station, I realize how inadequate that term is to describe this or any other work and I resolve to strike it from my lexicon.

Blood and Thunder does, in fact, take place in a 9th Ward apartment the night Hurricane Katrina made landfall on the Gulf Coast.  The apartment’s tenant Marcus, played by a brooding Keith Arthur Bolden, has chosen to ignore orders to evacuate and plans instead to wait out the storm with shotgun in hand.  His brother Quentin, phenomenally acted by Tony Williams, shows up on his doorstep after escaping the local lockup with a crowd of nearly drowned inmates.  The two have a serious history revolving around Marcus’ late girlfriend Charlie (Candice Afia’s deft performance makes this cast 3 for 3), the details of which are the subject of Terence Anthony’s well paced script.  Unlike the handful of ‘Katrina dramas’ I’ve been subject to in the past, the storm is not the hero or the villains of this piece.  It does not concern itself with the ineptitude of government and safety services, the plight of the elderly, or with the callousness with which God shows his wrath even to the poorest of peoples.  Instead, Anthony tells the story of a desperate family and how they came to be so unhappy.  The rising water and lashing winds serve as a backdrop and a time limit on a violent struggle with no chance at a happy ending.

Sara Wagner makes the most of Hyperion Station’s diminutive space, and brings plenty of both blood and thunder to bear.  The transitions between past and present are seamless but creepy, because even as the mood and circumstances change the blood pools up in earlobes and on tabletops.  There is a gun in this play, and it poses more danger and grabs more attention than Katrina ever could. Blood and Thunder says more about life in the 9th Ward before the storm than after and, through the collapse of these three forgotten lives, how poverty and alcohol drowned New Orleans long before the levees broke.

Blood and Thunder by Terence Anthony is produced by Cece Tio for Moving Arts.  Directed by Sara Wagner, co-produced by Steve Lozier. Set and light design is by Jorge I. Velasquez, sound by Jason Duplissea, fights by Caleb Terray.  Stage managed by Marc Caldwell.

Blood and Thunder is performed  Fridays and Saturdays at 8 pm, Sundays at 3 pm, through March 28, 2010.

The Hyperion Station is located at 1822 Hyperion Ave, Los Angeles,  90039 (just north of Hyperion and Fountain in Silverlake.)

Tickets prices: $15 Friday and Saturday,  Sunday matinees are $12.

Reservations are available online at www.MovingArts.org or by phone at (323) 666-3259.