James
Karas
Tracy Letts’
early play Killer Joe is about life in a trailer park. Yes, all the characters
are white trash and there is a prodigious amount of violence but there is also
serious playwriting. I like to think of the play as violence and gore for the
intelligent person. Maybe.
The play opens
with a young woman climbing to the roof of a trailer using a rope ladder. There
is a thunderclap of music and the lights go out leaving the young woman
mysteriously standing atop the trailer. The play continues with Chris (Adam
Gillen) frantically knocking on the door to be let into the trailer so he can
urinate.
From left: Adam Gillen and Steffan
Rhodri in Killer Joe. Photo Marc Brenner
The plot of Killer
Joe can hardly be more melodramatic. Chris, a teenager, is desperate
for money to pay his drug dealer who will kill him if he does not. He convinces
his father Ansel (Steffan Rhodri) to let him hire Killer Joe (James Groom) to
kill his mother so that Chris, his sister Dottie and Ansel can collect on her
life insurance policy. Agreed.
We meet Killer
Joe who comes to close the deal for his next job. He is usually played by
star-power Orlando Bloom who was indisposed the day I saw the production.
Cold-blooded killers are a frequent occurrence in movies and on television but this
man goes over the top. He is a complete professional with good manners and a
few rules. He gets paid $25,000 up front and he demands obedience. The violence
within him is terrifying because it is hidden beneath a veneer of good manners.
Groom’s performance is simply stellar.
Chris and Ansel
have no money but Joe is willing to make an exception and take a retainer –
Dottie (Sophie Cookson). Dottie is attractive but not all there but that does
not deter Joe from proceeding to have sexual relations with her. Joe fulfills
his end of the bargain and I will say nothing about the rest of the plot for
fear of spoiling it for you.
The words
trailer trash barely begin to describe all of the people in the play. The door
in the opening scene is answered by Sharla (Neve McIntosh), Ansel’s girlfriend,
who is wearing nothing below the waist and does not see anything wrong with her
appearance. Chris is shocked.
With the
possible exception of Dottie, these people are the scum of the earth who live
like pigs. Gillen as Chris is frantic throughout the play because he is living
in terror of being wiped out any moment. Ansel is a doormat but a filthy one
who is capable of violence. Sharla is just trash.
The play makes
considerable demands on the actors. The seething evil in the eyes and actions
of Killer Joes, the terror suffered by Chris and his outbursts of violence, the
furor of Ansel and Sharla test the mettle of all of them and the audience
remains agog at what is happening. All five give stupendous performances.
Director Simon
Evans gives us a taut, disciplined production that is all the more effective
for its embrace of the trailer park atmosphere and the violent life of its
inhabitants.
The single set
by Grace Smart shows the kitchen and living room of the trailer and it is
perfectly suitable.
The final tableau
of the play leaves the plot perhaps where the play began. But one cannot be
sure. It is partially the director’s choice to leave us wondering.
___________
Killer
Joe by
Tracy Letts continues until August 18, 2018 at Trafalgar Studios, 14 Whitehall,
London, SW1A 2DY. www.trafalgarentertainment.com/
No comments:
Post a Comment