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.