The Meat Kings! (Inc.) of Brooklyn Heights at the Park Theatre – review

I’m willing to bet my next box of interval Maltesers that few UK audience members have spent much time in the back room of a New York butchers.

Step through the PVC strip curtains, then, into Hannah Doran’s debut play, which won last year’s Papatango New Writing Prize – a world of dangling carcasses and pooling blood, where the American Dream is slapped onto the chopping block for disembowelment.

T is the new summer temp at Cafarelli & Sons, a generations-old family business being kept barely afloat by the bullsh*t-averse but benevolent Paula. Recently released from prison and struggling to make ends meet, T joins a team of three men on equally precarious footing in Trump’s America.

When Paula tells apprentices Billy (an ex-con trying to cover his mother’s spiralling medical bills) and JD (a “Dreamer” protected from deportation only by his DACA) that one of them will get the chop come autumn, we see the ugly reality of living in a country where only some are allowed to thrive – the scheming and moral sacrifices that desperation drives.

Doran’s knack for world-building and character is clear from the off. Backstories are neatly woven, the dynamics of the shop feel long-embedded, and the business of butchery is both enthralling and totally convincing – born no doubt from Doran’s own time spent working in a Brooklyn butcher’s, and George Turvey’s assured direction.

The first act does feel on the verge of baggy, with the odd plot point failing to sufficiently raise the stakes, but by the second act, we’re motoring. By the show’s denouement, with tension ratcheted, dialogue sharpening, and tragedy hovering, I’m put in mind of a modern A View from the Bridge.

The cast of five are all excellent. Ash Hunter’s Billy morphs from hulking alpha to caged animal – eyes searching wildly for gaps in the fence. Marcello Cruz is thoroughly winning as JD – all earnest passion and golden retriever energy. Jackie Clune’s Paula balances toughness with heart, while Mithra Malek’s T does the same dance but with old-school loyalty versus nagging conscience. And Eugene McCoy is understatedly unscrupulous as head butcher David, a Wall Street hotshot turned divorced ex-con, who seems to be one bad FaceTime with his kids away from implosion.

Mona Camille’s spare set of stainless-steel tables and hanging meat lets the innate violence of the space – and in turn of America, and its most desperate inhabitants – speak for itself: there are Chekhov’s knives lying all over the place.

I won’t spoil whether they’re ever maliciously used by the actors or not. But I will say that, against the backdrop of Trump’s deportation drive and the continued healthcare crisis for those without insurance, Doran’s gutsy play carves out a vital question: who is really allowed to dream in America?