~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Slaughter City

by Naomi Wallace
San Francisco Weekly April 7, 2004 by Sunny Andersen

Tickets & Directions / Home / Now Playing & Coming Soon / Back to Media List / To email us

You Kill Me

Kentucky noir onstage

Kentucky conjures up a myriad of enticing images: extravagant hats on the heads of Derby-goers, luscious bourbons blended to perfection by Maker's Mark and small-batch producers, and, of course, the bat that hits the hardest, the Louisville Slugger. What doesn't immediately come to mind are the trials of assembly-line workers at a meat processing plant, a brutal reality explored in Slaughter City, which makes its West Coast premiere.

In Naomi Wallace's riveting drama, first performed in 1996 by England's Royal Shakespeare Company, two thirtysomething neighbors on a slaughterhouse assembly line -- lifelong friends Roach (an African-American woman) and Maggot (a Caucasian man) -- are confronted by the thanklessness of their jobs, industrial labor issues, and a mystical force going by the name of Cod. Passion, desire, and other human foibles come to the forefront as Cod (played by San Francisco native Gillian Chadsey, returning to town for this role) awakens an unexpected fervor and power in the workers.

With a slightly surreal bent, Wallace's play examines a complex tangle of issues -- gender, race, politics, and the human condition -- while still maintaining tinges of humor and poetry. Audiences become grittily entrenched in the world of Kentucky's blue-collar workers, without having to cross state lines or get drenched in the blood of recently butchered animals. The show has its final open dress rehearsal tonight at 8 (and continues through May 8) at the Exit Theatre, 156 Eddy (at Taylor), S.F. Admission is $15-20 (the gala opening on April 10 is $25); call 675-5995 or visit www.crowdedfire.org.

Home / Now Playing & Coming Soon / Back to Media List / To email us