‘Bleeding Kansas’ is visceral and nicely timed (2024)

Talk about a battleground state: In the 1850s, violence broke out across Kansas as settlers prepared to decide whether it would become a free or slave state. Abolitionists and pro-slavery factions both viewed Kansas as a tipping point: The results there would bring about a shift in the direction of the divided nation.

The fighting became so bloody that the influential New York Tribune dubbed it “Bleeding Kansas.”

That’s also the title Kathryn Walat gave her play set during those violent years that foreshadowed the Civil War. Her 2007 play “Bleeding Kansas,” in its West Coast premiere by Moxie Theatre, demonstrates how ideology, religion, race and notions of personal freedom can become a potent and bloody mixture – certainly a contemporary theme in this election year.

While the play may feel at times like a history lesson, mostly it focuses on a handful of fictional characters that find themselves in the midst of the turmoil, whether by choice or circ*mstance.

Hannah (Jennifer Eve Thorn), a schoolteacher from Boston, arrives in Kansas to help the cause of abolitionism. Wide-eyed and adventurous, she possesses the moral certainty of the religious. Through letters to her sister back home – a device used with effective humor at first – we learn about the broader political events happening in Kansas.

Kitty (Jo Anne Glover) and “free-soiler” husband George (David S. Humphrey) are would-be homesteaders from Indiana who, having suffered a tragedy along the way, simply want to settle down and work their farm in peace. Their neighbor, Josiah (Mark Petrich), though pro-slavery, similarly has little political inclinations.

But as the level of violence ratchets up, it becomes impossible for these characters to remain outside the fray. Their lives are forever changed as they experience the incredible cost of the battle over slavery.

So-called “border ruffians” arrive from neighboring Missouri to bolster support for slavery, through intimidation, ballot stuffing, destruction of property and, eventually, violence. Abolitionist groups also respond with aggression and bloodshed.

Border ruffian Red (Christopher Buess) spends much of his time following and provoking Hannah. Though enemies on either side of the political divide, they develop a sort of forbidden romance.

Thorn does some of her finest work with the challenging character of Hannah, making her impossibly perky and preachy yet likable and genuine. Glover gives a taut performance as Kitty, a woman haunted by the death of her daughter, and whose disappointment with Kansas clashes with her deep love for her husband and his determination to make a life there.

Humphrey is notable as Kitty’s gentle husband, more fit for poetry than laboring in the field. Buess gives a snakelike, physical performance as Red, skulking around with other ruffians and offering to Hannah the apple of both danger and, potentially, love. Petrich is neighborly as Josiah, but doesn’t give us enough character arc following major suffering and loss.

Jennifer Brawn Gittings’ lovely period costumes delineate the divide between North and South, as well as perhaps the current political divide – Hannah in rich blue and Kitty in blood red in the first act. Sound design by Jason Connors, which includes fiddle, violin and cello music, and lighting design by Jason Bieber, aptly set the tone. Jerry Sonnenberg’s evocative set consists of a log cabin, an expanse of blue sky and a floor of real dirt.

That dirt comes in handy when the characters draw their proverbial lines in the sand. Walat may be accused of overworking a metaphor or two, returning to such symbols as the land, borders and blood again and again. Director Delicia Turner Sonnenberg unnecessarily draws out these metaphors even more.

Despite minor flaws, “Bleeding Kansas” has powerful emotional moments, and others that resonate with our current red-state, blue-state political debate. Walat has smartly crafted complex characters with diverse opinions on slavery. The playwright seems less interested in who is right – that question was answered long ago – than in exploring how we arrive at our beliefs and the potentially dangerous implications of our convictions.

Now in another era of political divides, Moxie’s spirited production should spur some lively topical discussions. Jennifer Chung Klam is a San Diego writer.