Review: Yockey’s ‘Bleeding Hearts’ contains lots of bleeding, plot twists and wild shifts in tone

Bleeding Hearts, the world-premiere production at Theatrical Outfit from Atlanta-raised playwright Steve Yockey, running through February 22, is a strange, often hilarious farce about the class divides in modern America. Sometimes all we have left to do is laugh in the face of our own destruction.

Anchored by showcase performances from Veronika Duerr and Tess Malis Kincaid, the wild black comedy flies by at a brisk 90 minutes full of rat-a-tat banter, crazy dream sequences, well-meaning idealism and bloody, bloody violence. Yockey’s dialogue is great — full of zingers, though the larger meaning of the narrative is harder to pinpoint. For the majority of the runtime, it’s lots of madness.

Once the story reaches its central message, it’s hard to see why it took so much kink, kleptomania and knife play to get there, even though the journey is entertaining. Yockey’s work is often balls-to-the-wall insane, and Bleeding Hearts is no exception. From its opening moments, the tension is dialed to 11, and it remains there, even when characters seem relatively unbothered by anything happening onstage.

These are anxious times. It’s hard to make a living or to know how to do the right thing, particularly when many of us are just trying to get through stressful days. The play recognizes this anxiety, and it places all of its characters in the midst of it — fiddling while the world burns.

Sloane Burke (Duerr) is a suburban homemaker and former television weather girl now coping with a troubling lack of sleep and a marriage without healthy communication. Her husband Timothy (Christopher Hampton) is a breadwinner stressed out perpetually by finances. Both of them are having an identity crisis.

At the outset of the play, Timothy is compelled to do a good deed by helping a homeless man outside of his office find shelter from the cold.

Unfortunately, the homeless man that Timothy brings home is Old Blindy (Tony Larkin), a shirtless, knife-wielding person covered in blood. This rattles Sloane and strains the marriage a bit further. Then, things only get worse.

Soon, Sloane’s carefree brother Griff (Josh Adams) and a scene-stealing rich neighbor named Felicia Reed-Walker (Kincaid) involve themselves in the worsening situation. To say anything more about the plot would spoil the surprise of Bleeding Hearts, and this show thrives on its twists.

Sean Daniels’ direction keeps the show moving at a brisk clip, with tonal shifts signaled by changes in sound effects — designed by Dan Bauman — and lighting designed by David Reingold. The lighting changes, in particular, help to illustrate many of the wild shifts the narrative takes. Yockey once again plays with the line between reality and fantasy, areas he has also explored in works like Reykjavik and Mercury, as well as his television show The Flight Attendant.

Duerr’s characterization of Sloane is hilarious, often biting and sarcastic. It’s great to see her back on an Atlanta stage. And Kincaid’s character enters every scene like a hurricane, delivering some mind-blowing monologues without interruption or even much room for breath. Hampton is effectively milquetoast and browbeaten as Timothy. Larkin is terrifying. And Adams is charming at key moments.

As biting farce, it works well, though the climax is surprisingly contemplative compared to its more brazen moments.

Overall, the show feels like a sitcom that too frequently veers from its laugh-track into The Twilight Zone. It’s gleefully appalling more often than not, and it’s certainly unlike anything else you’ll see onstage this year. Such audacity should be experienced with an audience, if only to discuss what the heck you just saw.

Where & When

Bleeding Hearts by Steve Yockey is at Theatrical Outfit’s Balzer Theatre through February 22. Tickets start at $20.
84 Luckie St. NW.

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Benjamin Carr is an ArtsATL editor-at-large who has contributed to the publication since 2019 and is a member of the American Theatre Critics Association, the Dramatists Guild, the Atlanta Press Club and the Horror Writers Association. His writing has been featured in podcasts for iHeartMedia, onstage as part of the Samuel French Off-Off Broadway Short Play Festival and online in The Guardian. His debut novel, Impacted, was published by The Story Plant.