Playwright: Tracy Letts. At: Profiles Theatre, 4147 N. Broadway. Phone: 773-549-1815; $30-$35. Runs through: Feb. 28
Before he became a writer, Tracy Letts was an actorone of a collective of like-minded artists ready to give their all for his first attempt at playwrighting. So it was hardly surprising that this grimly humorous tale of murder-for-hire initially should have emerged more a collage of well-crafted elements than a single, fully-integrated whole. Killer Joe nevertheless grew to be an international phenomenon, with successful runs in London, New York and cities throughout Europe and the United States. And now, 17 years later, Profiles Theatre presents the first home-grown revival of this debut of a seminal Chicago talent.
It's difficult to imagine an auditorium smaller than the classroom-sized Next Labthe appropriately claustrophobic site for a play set in a house-trailerbut Profiles' storefront puts the action so close to the audience that when a sack of fried chicken is brought onstage, the aroma permeates the room to the last rows. And while this in-your-lap proximity makes for improved audibility, it also mandates a naturalism accurate to the last detailnot just a functional kitchen sink and coffee maker, but also full-frontal nudity whenever plausible ( the lady of the house wearing only a navel-length T-shirt for sleeping on a hot Texas night, for examplealthough answering the door in such deshabille could be a mite irregular ) .
Steppenwolf alumnus Rick Snyder is no stranger to the sweat-and-grit school of realism, however. Under his direction, the progress of a clan as petty as their proposed crime never idles for "actorly moments," but instead careens along at a velocity exceeding the attention span of its perpetrators while ensuring that we keep pace with them every moment.
The title character, portrayed by Darrell W. Cox with an authentic panhandle drawl, stops well short of spaghetti-western cliché. In the role of Dottie, the enigmatic kid sister who catches his eye, Claire Wellin maintains an intensity belying her character's superficial innocence. While Kevin Bigley, Somer Benson and Howie Johnson likewise reject the temptation to paint their potentially-cartoonish personae larger than life, even during the brutally violentbut also piteously banalclimax.
Playgoers who missed the boat on American Buffalo in 1975, might be forgiven a similar lack of foresight in dismissing Killer Joe as just another Quentin Tarantino creepfest when it premiered in 1993. But nearly two decades have allowed us to see past its shock and squalor to its disturbing commentary on the human folly still infecting our society today.