Killer Joe

Published Wednesday 15 August 2007 at 13:55 by Nick Awde

First performed in 1993, Tracy Letts’ funny-violent play has become a mini-legend for its depiction of a Texas trailer trash family stuck on the self-destruct button. It’s now the turn of The Comedians’ Theatre Company to take us on the latest tour of the trailer parks of Dallas.

Chris (Ed Weeks) crashes through the front door of his trailer home late one night waking the rest of the family. He owes money and he’s going to get knobbled if he can’t find the cash pronto. His dad Ansel (Phil Nichol) scratches his crotch in sympathy while stepmom Sharla (Lizzie Roper) screeches half-naked in his ear. His sister Dottie (Charlotte Jo Hanbury) sleepwalks in and out.

It’s hard to go on without giving away the plot. Suffice to say that a murderous plot that the family hatch to make them all a bit of cash provokes a visit from Killer Joe Cooper (Tony Law), police detective by day, assassin by night. In the convincing caravan interior set, some great scenes unfold: Sharla wheedling at her stepdaughter to put on her dress while Dottie simultaneously tries to get her stepmother to admit to having a secret boyfriend, or the appalling humour of watching Chris and Ansel applying the logic of who would be missed in order to justify killing.

The cast is energetic and work hard throughout at getting the laughs and keeping the tension high, but they are not helped by Maggie Inchley’s static direction which leaves Tony Law in particular stranded by not letting him get to the sinister heart of Killer Joe. Additionally, the cast’s accents need improving right across the board, and not just for authenticity - a bad accent equals bad diction.

Funny certainly, violent yes and even momentarily pathos-filled, this gory game of Happy families is still not the high-octane blood fest it promises to be. Like last year’s creaking Talk Radio, written by Eric Bogosian and performed by the same company, Letts’ play is showing its age, particularly in the lazy Sam Shepherd-style introspective monologues. The company would have a more enduring hit on their hands if they simply transposed the action to a mobile home park in Britain.