Society’s castoffs haunt ‘In the Blood’

An egg salad sandwich -- such an inconsequential thing, yet it’s about all that holds off starvation. A homeless mother has been saving it as a reward, but before she can eat it, another hungry person takes a big bite. Then one of the children spots the food, and the mother relinquishes it, her face flooding with sorrow. She has just suffered an incalculable loss: the loss of hope.

As brought to life by director Laura Marchant and a cast led by the expressive RaShelle Stocker, the 1999 Suzan-Lori Parks drama “In the Blood” is as powerful as a Dorothea Lange photograph -- beautiful, haunting, shattering. The collar-grabbing Los Angeles-area premiere is a loud*R*mouth Theatre Company guest production at the Edison Theatre in Long Beach.

A MacArthur “genius” grant recipient and 2002 Pulitzer Prize winner (for “Topdog/Underdog”), Parks has been living in Southern California for the last few years, yet little of her work has been performed here. To picture her description-defying shows, locals have followed the out-of-town reviews and have puzzled through the strangely poetic, oddly notated scripts. But there’s no substitute for the real thing.

In a story that echoes Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Scarlet Letter,” “In the Blood” ventures inside the lives of present-day American families like that of single, destitute Hester (Stocker) and her five children, ages 13 to 2. The adult actors portraying the children (Kenneth McClain, Kevin Nichols, Joseph R. Lynch, Emily Duval and the single-named Vonyse) also appear as representatives of the institutions -- marriage, religion, health care, friendship and social assistance -- that fail Hester.

To suggest the family’s makeshift home under a bridge, set designer Andrew Deppen has rigged the stage with a web of boards and castoff junk. It’s a flimsy structure, built of society’s detritus. Very symbolic.

This interplay of artful abstraction and gritty reality -- encoded in Parks’ script and extending to everything from Leif Gantvoort’s lighting (which tends to isolate characters in lonely pinpoints of illumination) to the bold performances -- sears itself into the mind.

Although each day sends Hester plummeting deeper into privation, she tries to be optimistic. “I get my leg up I’ll be OK,” she tells herself. But when helping hands are extended, they’re offered with condescension or with an expectation of something in return. (Parks’ biggest miscalculation may be that she overstates this last idea in graphic descriptions of sexual favors.)

Motherly affection warms the chilly atmosphere, but tragedy is coming -- the sort that makes lurid headlines.

Will the true culprit be prosecuted? Probably not, because a whole society would have to stand trial.

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‘In the Blood’

Where: Edison Theatre, 213 E. Broadway, Long Beach

When: Fridays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 2:30 p.m.

Ends: Aug. 9

Price: $15

Contact: (562) 987-0053

Running time: 2 hours, 10 minutes