THE CASE AGAINST AN EASY OUT

A darkly funny, anxiety-inducing thriller
loses its footing in the final stretch

Kirsten D’Aurelio and Heather Dennis

In the skies over Texas, a pregnant young woman called Nessa faints on a plane en route to New York. The plane is diverted to Dallas/Fort Worth, and she is rushed to the emergency room, where she wakes and receives some horrific news about her body. In a state of shock and discombobulation, she boards another ambulance and is brought to another hospital, or so she thinks, and ushered into a meeting room. Her companion Val, a brisk, middle-aged woman, opens up a laptop and starts assembling notepads and forms. Assuming she’s there for more treatment, Nessa asks to use the restroom, but when she opens the door to the meeting room, she’s shocked to find that there is an armed guard stationed outside.

Heather Dennis

Promethean Theatre Ensemble opens its twentieth season with the Chicago premiere of Arlene Hutton’s The Blood of the Lamb. Directed by Anna C. Bahow and performed by two different casts, the play takes place in the aftermath of a new law passed in the Republic of Texas, one that asserts that a fetus is endowed with the same rights as a human being. Reeling in shock in the meeting room—scenic designer Amy C. Gilman nails the oppressively boring look of anonymous airport rooms everywhere—Nessa (Heather Dennis) is told that Val (Kirsten D’Aurelio) is not a nurse but a lawyer. When Nessa asks why she needs a lawyer, she is informed that Val is not there to represent her; she is there to represent the “baby.”

Heather Dennis and Kirsten D’Aurelio

I will not go into the specifics of the Texas law that precipitates this scenario, but I will say that it is a masterstroke on Hutton’s part, to the extent that for a brief moment I thought it was an actual law. It’s an extension of the red-state laws enacted in the aftermath of the fall of Roe v. Wade, simply taking the denial of women’s bodily autonomy to its logical extremes.

Kirsten D’Aurelio

This is a severely anxiety-inducing play, particularly in the first hour, and Dennis is key to this element of the show. The audience knows only what Nessa knows, and Hutton beautifully parcels out bits of information through Val, who is a placid, technologically challenged mother of five, prone to digressions and talking to herself. It turns out that Nessa is the first person to be prosecuted under this law, and no one seems to know just how to go about it, not least the state reps (and one senator) who put the whole thing together. As Val makes phone calls to multiple lawyers, Dennis’s Nessa transitions from dazedness and befuddlement to frustration and panic, finally exploding in a moment that’s about as cathartic as any I’ve experienced in a theatre.

Kirsten D’Aurelio and Heather Dennis

The Blood of the Lamb is best in this section, where Hutton’s dialogue and D’Aurelio’s delivery develop a Kafkaesque rhythm that, despite the disturbing subject matter, is very darkly funny. It’s a terrifically tense thriller up to this point. Where it starts to go off the rails is in its last thirty minutes. You see, the interesting person here is not Nessa but Val. Nessa is not particularly well-developed as a character. Fortunately for the play, Dennis is superb, imbuing the character with nuance and depth, even when it’s not required of her.

Kirsten D’Aurelio and Heather Dennis

Val, on the other hand, is a fascinating, complex creation, and D’Aurelio does a phenomenal job with the part, balancing her righteous anger and guilt with her professionalism and intellect. Val is a true believer. And here’s where the play falls apart. In her attempt to give Val an “out,” Hutton resorts to the trope that the conservative men who craft these laws are incompetent fools. The anti-choice movement has been racking up legislative and legal successes for the last several decades. Even before Roe v. Wade was overturned, the ruling had been reduced to a shell of its original form by legislators and legal minds who repeatedly shaved it down with scalpel-like precision every chance they got. They’ve been playing the long game, and very successfully, I might add. These are not stupid people, and the persistence of that tired cliché among liberal and left-wing sets has been putting us at a disadvantage against them since the late 1990s.

Delia Ford and Meghann Tabor

Even worse is the ending of the play, which is a transparent attempt to let Val off the hook. Regardless of her self-doubt and her low opinion of her male colleagues, it cannot be ignored that Val is entirely complicit in the passage of this horrific law. She may not have crafted it or cast a vote for it, but she stands behind it and believes it to be necessary. Hutton’s attempt to sidestep this uncomfortable truth is wishful thinking at best and hypocritical at worst. There will be another Nessa, and what’s going to happen to her? At the end of the day, a kindly Aunt in Gilead is still an Aunt in Gilead.

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photos by Steven Townshend

The Blood of the Lamb
Promethean Theatre Ensemble
The Den Theatre, 1331 N. Milwaukee Ave. in Chicago
Thurs.–Sat. 7:30; Sun. 3
ends on Oct. 3, 2026
90 minutes, no intermission
for tickets ($35; $25 students/seniors), call 773.697.3830 or visit Promethean Theatre Ensemble

for more shows, visit Theatre in Chicago
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