Good Stage Gore

In general, the theatre doesn't do blood well. It's somehow pretty hard for live audiences to suspend their disbelief at the sight of a guy sticking a retractable plastic knife or blunt-tipped sword into the gap between an adversary's left side and his arm and watching a load of radioactive-looking ketchup spurt out from the fake wound. The cinema does gore so much more believably.

That's why the most engrossing plays and compelling productions so often use language to describe bloody scenes of violence and death or use sound and or/visuals in an artful way to convey grizzly actions. The Greeks understood this and kept fratricide, matricide and all other kinds of -cide in the wings, leaving the horror to our imaginations.

Every now and again, though, I come across a theatre production which manages to cause the bile to rise in our throats by finding a way to make gore work on stage. But even when these effects succeed, more often than not, they make us laugh as much as they shock us. This is frequently the case with the sheep's eyeballs and severed rubber heads used by San Francisco's grand guignol company, Thrillpeddlers.

At the weekend, however, I caught a production of Tracy Letts' Bug at San Francisco Playhouse which not only managed to put blood center stage, but also made it truly stomach-churning.

The drama pretty much reads like a knock off of every classic thriller in the movie cannon from The Fly to Psycho. The play tells the story of Agnes, a down-and-out junkie alcaholic who takes in a tortured young man Peter, who says he's on the run from the military. The two of them spend their days holed up in a seedy midwestern motel room. In between trying to keep Agnes' abusive ex-husband at bay, the two of them develop a crazy phobia about tiny insects invading their bodies.

When Gabriel Marin as Peter suddenly takes off his shirt to reveal a chest lacerated with wounds like he's some kind of latterday St Sebastian, responses from the audience range from sharp intakes of breath to uncomfortable laughter to cries. It's quite an effect. Marin's completely off-kielter (without going over the top) behavior makes us believe that he's suffering from some terrible inner torment. The wounds are a manifestation of the turmoil he's experiencing inside. It's truly frightening.

It's so rare to see blood done well on stage. Now at least I know it's not impossible. This clever marriage of taut writing, compelling stage makeup and brilliant acting may is very hard to achieve though. As the saying goes, kids: don't try this at home.