The Meat Kings! (Inc.) Of Brooklyn Heights at the Park Theatre: a compelling blue-collar American nightmare

The butchers in this grimly effective workplace drama are at the cutting edge of the current, nightmarish version of the American dream. Mostly first- or second-generation immigrants, and mostly ex-cons, they’re struggling to get by in a world where family businesses like the 100-year-old shop in Williamsburg they work at are being squeezed out of existence.

Hannah Doran’s script is schematic but urgent and impressively immersed in the grain of blue-collar New York life, given she’s a British-Irish bookseller based in London. (She has also studied and had plays produced in the States: she may also have been a butcher, for all I know.) The Meat Kings won the 2024 Papatango writing prize and is presented here in a tight, vividly acted in-the-round staging by the company’s artistic director, George Turvey.

It’s the Fourth of July and Jackie Clune’s Paula, the fifth-generation Sicilian owner of Cafarelli and Sons, harangues her team like a drill sergeant to prep meat for NY barbecues. They are a boisterous crew. Senior cutter David (Eugene McCoy) is a former Wall Street moneyman and coke fiend who did time for fraud. Billy (Ash Hunter), seemingly a gentle Irish-Dominican bear of a man, committed a brutal assault. Young, larky JD (Marcello Cruz) is a Mexican “Dreamer” – having arrived in the States as a child he’s permitted to work and hopes for full citizenship.

Into this hectic, testosterone-soused mix comes a young woman played with hard-eyed, shoulders-braced toughness by Mithra Malek and known only as ‘T’. A vegetarian and Billy’s cousin, she learned butchery in jail and sees Cafarelli as a step up from working the “kill line” in an industrial Perdue chicken farm. Her arrival prompts not only a spark of romantic interest in JD but also larger questions of honesty and loyalty.

(Photo by Mark Douet)

The characters’ opposing wants and needs evolve into a perfect storm of pressure, sometimes in ways that are far too pat. David is divorced and estranged from his son, idling away lonely hours playing pool and smoking blow with Billy. JD and Billy are competing for a more senior job at Cafarelli’s, dependent on passing a “cut test”. Billy is caring for a sick mom with no health insurance, and JD’s status is insecure.

Almost everyone is one paycheck away from welfare, working the garbage trucks, or returning to prison. And Paula’s financial worries are worsened by the fact meat is going missing. (As one character tried to lure another into this crime I hoped for the reply: “The steaks are too high!” But no.) Meanwhile, the unseen customers are ordering wagyu beef, and ground porterhouse to feed to their chihuahuas.

Doran convincingly evokes the harsh world of knives and blood, of butterflied chops and rolled shoulders, in the cutting room. She seems to have genuine knowledge of and affection for the craft of butchery, that goes beyond nostalgia for a dying way of life. Expressions of affection on the other hand are mawkish, expressed through the buying of a round of sugary coffees or a bonding moment over a beaten-up baseball mitt. The last 20 minutes of the show, when Trumpian viciousness crashes through the door, feels frankly unnecessary.

There is lots to enjoy in the performances though. Malek and Hunter stand out, she for her slowly unbending hardness, he for the hangdog sensitivity that eventually reveals itself as self-pity. Clune is good too as the no-nonsense Paula (described in a script note as “butch dyke, major swag”), and Cruz manages to make the child-like JD believable. McCoy has the hardest job with the functional character of David.

They all make a decent show of expertly slicing meat that appears to be made out of some sort of gelatine. Larger cuts hang above the cutting tables on Mona Camille’s set, like props from a horror movie: a reminder that these characters daren’t look up to see what’s bearing down on them.

Park Theatre, to Nov 29; parktheatre.co.uk