{"id":418,"date":"2016-04-07T21:22:10","date_gmt":"2016-04-08T01:22:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sewerlid.com\/?p=418"},"modified":"2016-04-08T18:54:13","modified_gmt":"2016-04-08T22:54:13","slug":"coal-mine-theatre-slays-killer-joe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sewerlid.com\/index.php\/2016\/04\/07\/coal-mine-theatre-slays-killer-joe\/","title":{"rendered":"Coal Mine Theatre Slays With Killer Joe<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"


\nWhen presented with people who live in a vacuum, the prudent thing is to determine just how far their limited worldviews extend. In the case of the characters in <\/span>Tracy Letts<\/span><\/a>\u2019 1993 debut, <\/span>Killer Joe<\/span><\/i> \u2014 adapted for the screen in 2011 and starring Matthew Mcconaughey \u2014 the answer is not very far. But that\u2019s exactly the point. <\/span>
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\n<\/span>The play follows the Smiths \u2014 a working class family from Dallas \u2014 after Chris (Matthew Gouveia) convinces his father Ansel (Paul Fauteux) to have Chris\u2019 mother murdered for the insurance money. Ansel\u2019s daughter Dottie (Vivien Endicott-Douglas) and current wife Sharla (Madison Walsh) soon catch on and implicate themselves. The family hires local cop Killer Joe Cooper (Matthew Edison) to carry out the job.
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\"Matthew

Matthew Gouveia and Paul Fauteux. Photo by Matt Campagna.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Though technically a dark comedy, this production\u00a0of <\/span>Killer Joe<\/span><\/i><\/a> shares more with a documentary as the Smiths are dead ringers for Donald Trump<\/a> supporters.\u00a0<\/span>Coal Mine\u2019s Artistic Curator, Ted Dykstra, said it himself minutes after curtain call on opening night, \u201cIf you were wondering who\u2019s going to be voting for him, now you know.\u201d The audience laughed. He said he wished it wasn\u2019t that funny. <\/span>
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\n<\/span>In our defense, most of the play\u2019s jokes manage to be hilarious and incite laughter as a defense mechanism or release valve against human suffering. When Chris says of his mother, \u201cI hate that bitch,\u201d and Ansel responds with a child\u2019s earnest selfishness, \u201cYou\u2019re talking about <\/span>my<\/span><\/i> ex-wife. <\/span>I\u2019m<\/span><\/i> the one who found her, \u201d the infantilization is just as funny as the need to laugh off how they\u2019re talking about murdering someone. When Ansel and Dottie enter a vegetative stage at the sight of a television with the instantaneity of a two-year-old, it smothers us with our own screen dependencies like shit in a dog\u2019s face. <\/span><\/p>\n

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\"Matthew

Matthew Gouveia and Vivien Endicott-Douglas. Photo by Matt Campagna.<\/p><\/div>\n


\nThis is <\/span>In Yer Face<\/span><\/a> theatre, after all, where too-close-for-comfort is the preferred method of ingestion. Set inside the Smith family trailer, the audience is seated so close that the front row\u2019s feet rest on the living room carpet. Jagged lines in the dirt under the dining room table suggest a recent scuffle. The bathroom patrons use (before showtime only!) is the same one the Smiths call their own. Without the distance of a news sound bite\u2019s brevity, intrusion is something to get used to. The payoff, you\u2019ll find, is worth it. \u00a0<\/span>
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\n<\/span>Killer Joe<\/span><\/i> takes the radical humanist stance of affixing a domestic, sociological lens onto North American politics by getting to know the people threatening to make it great again. The characters’ egoism can feel like five plays simultaneously unfolding. Misogyny is doled out with the poise of inherited wisdom. Genuine care is a rarity; glimpses of it surfacing are perverse in their renewal of faith in people only to tear it down moments later. Amidst the gunshots and blood splatter, a simple \u201cYou alright, guy?\u201d or affording someone the privilege of changing clothes never carried such incredible weight. \u00a0<\/span>
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\n<\/span>The characters’ generally hammed-up interaction, paired with the gruesome subject matter, makes them neither wholly realistic nor paper-thin assemblages from sitcoms, christianity and conservative politics, but an uncanny mix of both. They project theatrical versions of the happy-murder-song gimmick of <\/span>Guns N\u2019 Roses\u2019 \u201cUsed to Love Her,\u201d<\/span><\/a> which might see them dismissed as stereotypes, stock realist takes on <\/span>Married with Children <\/span><\/i>without the softening veneer of make-believe. But stereotypes are exactly what they\u2019re supposed to be. Plenty of Trump rally footage confirms the resemblance.
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\"Matthew<\/a>

Matthew Edison as Killer Joe Cooper. Photo by Matt Campagna.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Smart production choices help focus the discrimination and dysfunction as indicative of a voice seldom heard. Cutting the sound on Joe and Dottie as she slips into a black dress doesn\u2019t belittle sexual abuse, it displays it for us in horrifying phenomenological suspension, it gives room to get past our moral filters into a place of empathy. <\/span>Killer Joe <\/span><\/i>may have passed judgement on the Smiths in 1993, made fun of their backwards ideology in the interest of preventing it. Not anymore, though. Irony has long overstayed its welcome as weapon of choice.<\/span><\/p>\n

Endicott-Douglas<\/span><\/a> plays Dottie as a vessel, a medium who doesn\u2019t know what she\u2019s transmitting or who it\u2019s for. It\u2019s hard to tell whether she\u2019s conscious or sleepwalking, innocent or underestimated, and we\u2019re left with nothing but textures to read her. The result is a hallucinating angel. There\u2019s this blissed-out, clown-smile trance she falls into at the dinner table, roughly two-thirds through, that might be your new visual cue for evil.
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\"Vivien<\/a>

Vivien Endicott-Douglas and Matthew Gouveia. Photo by Matt Campagna.<\/p><\/div>\n


\nGouveia<\/span><\/a> brings the slime in buckets and never relents; yet he gets across by meaning well. Chris\u2019 passionate, misguided drive toward self-improvement over mere money is endearing, a light with faint traces of purity. He salvages our hope in people by guarding his love for Dottie and comes off noble for it, a commendable mark to hit for someone who wants to kill to finance his deadbeat lifestyle.<\/span><\/p>\n

Edison<\/span><\/a> is graceful and understated in keeping Killer Joe as small of a person as he can muster. His deadpan charm grows suspicious, robotic, into a way of overcompensating for a history we\u2019re left to imagine.<\/span><\/p>\n

Paul Fauteux<\/span><\/a>\u2019s comic timing is sharp as a switchblade. How he empties Ansel\u2019s conscience to the lowest possible level of sentience while killing every punchline \u00a0is almost computer generated. How he caresses that Budweiser and remote control exposes displaced love like a hockey player tweeting an injury. The warp speed with which his selfishness stops being cartoony draws the audience in by inertia.<\/span><\/p>\n

Madison Walsh<\/span><\/a> just is Sharla. The script asks a great deal of her and all she does is flex.
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\"Madison<\/a>

Madison Walsh, Vivien Endicott-Douglas, Matthew Gouveia and Paul Fauteux. Photo by Matt Campagna.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Years from now, this production should be remembered as a period piece, unabashedly of its time, all up in the chaos of history being written.<\/span><\/p>\n

Killer Joe <\/span><\/i>runs through April 24 at <\/span>The Coal Mine Theatre<\/span><\/a> (1454 Danforth Avenue). Get your tickets <\/span>here<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\"Photo<\/a>

Photo by Sandro Pehar Photography.<\/p><\/div>\n

Trevor Abes<\/strong> is a poet and arts writer living in Toronto, Canada. He was part of the winning ensemble at the 2015 SLAMtario Spoken Word Festival, and competed at both the National Poetry Slam and the Canadian Festival of Spoken Word as part of the Toronto Poetry Slam team. His work has appeared in Hart House Review<\/em>, The Rusty Toque<\/em>, Torontoist<\/em> and untethered<\/em>, among others. You can follow him on Twitter @TrevorAbes<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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When presented with people who live in a vacuum, the prudent thing is to determine just how far their limited worldviews extend. In the case of the characters in Tracy Letts\u2019 1993 debut, Killer Joe \u2014 adapted for the screen… Continue Reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":420,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sewerlid.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sewerlid.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sewerlid.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sewerlid.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sewerlid.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=418"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/sewerlid.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":443,"href":"https:\/\/sewerlid.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418\/revisions\/443"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sewerlid.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/420"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sewerlid.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sewerlid.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sewerlid.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}