Killer Joe by Pullitzer Winner Tracy Letts at Belvoir Street Downstairs

My review of Killer Joe here.

I read up about Killer Joe and listened to some of the music by featured band The Snowdroppers, and because I didn't really connect with the music I didn't think I was going to enjoy doing this story. But once I got the director, Iain Sinclair, on the phone it was one of the most enjoyable phone interviews I've done in quite a while. Really bummed I only had a quarter of a page allocated. I think I'll try to check out this play after all.

(The following is my original draft for my own reference. I'm just a little bemused by the sub-editing. My mistakes weren't caught and weird changes were made. Me no understand).


DIRTY DEEDS

TRACY LETTS’ LATEST PLAY HAS TAKEN OUT A COUPLE OF PRETTY IMPRESSIVE GONGS. A LONG TIME FAN OF THE WRITER’S WORK IS THEATRE DIRECTOR IAIN SINCLAIR. LEE BEMROSE GRABBED A LITTLE OF HIS TIME AS HE PREPARES TO DIRECT KILLER JOE FOR BELVOIR STREET.

Catching up with theatre director Iain Sinclair over the phone turned out to be a bit tricky. He’s a busy man, currently working on two productions. One is The Convicts Opera for Sydney Theatre, the other is Killer Joe which will be staged at Belvoir Downstairs. Both productions are gritty, both feature music, but while Convicts Opera is very Australian, Killer Joe is as American as apple pie... albeit a morally empty apple pie with a bad-ass attitude and a loaded Smith & Wesson.

Set in a Texan trailer park, Killer Joe follows the story of white trash Smith family. When the mother sells her dealer son’s drug stash, the son comes up with a plan to kill the mother to collect her life insurance. His sister thinks this is a sweet idea, and so they enlist the help of the corrupt local sheriff.

Written by recent Tony and Pulitzer winner Tracy Letts, I wonder if the play could have been adapted and set in an Australian caravan park, but the director feels there are some fundamental differences between America and Australia and that such an adaptation would be wrong for this particular play.

“The play is all about Texan values. The whole world has been living under Texan values for some time with our friends in the Republican party over there. This is like a boiled down version of that kind of thinking.

“Trailer park culture in America is a very different thing to trailer park culture here. There’s also the fact that Tracy Letts is an Oklahoman, which is just the next state along. The way that he’s written this is so much in the rhythm and style of southern American thinking. Texas is a very specific kind of place. Cormac McCarthy in No Country For Old Men said something like there’s something about Texas, something in the soil that seems to be able to soak up cruelty and dish it back out at the same time.”

At the heart of Killer Joe is the decay of values. It’s an examination of what happens to people living in social and moral vacuum, and while we have our version of idle lives and emptiness of both space and values here, Sinclair feels that it’s just intrinsically different in The States. He paraphrases Robert Hughes here in saying that the great difference between America and Australia is that because America started out as a Utopian society they’ve got nowhere to go but down, and because Australia started out as the trash can of Europe we’ve go nowhere to go but up.

Certainly the characters portrayed in Killer Joe are down. And dirty. Other words that pepper the conversation about the play are fierce, tough, strong and (when describing Tracy Letts’ writing style) muscular.

“It’s such a fiercely dramatic piece,” Sinclair says, clearly a long-time admirer of the writer. “And the reason for that is he’s a Steppenwolf [Theatre Company] guy and they have a reputation for putting on tight, hard, lean and smart theatre.”

For this production, the director has invited tight, hard, lean grimy blues band The Snowdroppers to play live on stage throughout the play.

“There’s something about those guys that I haven’t seen on stage for a long time in a rock band – even though they have a 1930’s depression blues aesthetic going on. For me it felt the same way as when I was a young kid I saw Nick Cave on stage for the first time. They manage to carry on this theatrical intensity which matches exactly the tone of this play.”

The Snowdroppers play gritty music, but it’s kind of upbeat as well, even if the things they sing about are not. Sinclair says this also ties in well because Killer Joe is savage, but with moments of surprising tenderness and humour throughout.

WHAT: Killer Joe
WHEN & WHERE: 10 October – 2 November at Belvoir Street Downstairs Theatre.