Killer Joe: Three and a Half Stars with Many Cackles and Snorts

If you liked Pulp Fiction, you’re gonna love ‘Killer Joe’ at the Magic Theater. If you didn’t, or if you’re looking for something uplifting – well, ‘Killer Joe’ is not about life’s exquisite possibilities.

It’s depraved, but it’s also polished and funny. All the action takes place in a broken-down Texas trailer where everyone and everything is at the end of its rope. The chair has a rip in the cushion, the sofa is covered with a ratty old blanket and the TV's antenna has to be kicked. A dog barks every time anyone walks outside, where it's almost always raining.

Each of the five characters is fatally flawed. Ansel, the father is a pot-smoking beer-drinking babbler. Chris and Sharla are immoral schemers (kill Mom? Sho Nuff!). Dottie, the brilliant Anna Bullard, was smothered by her mother as a child, so she's slow as molasses, and then there's Killer Joe (the equally brilliant Cully Fredricksen) out of whose every gesture flows an equal measure of depravity and menace. He acts like a cunning junkyard rat, and even manages to make himself move like one. A bald, 6'4" rat. That's Joe.

Sound good so far? Wait 'til the finale, when you see them trash the trailer like a $4 guitar at a punk rock concert. Nudity offend you? You get one full front male, one full front female and one bottomless female. The cast takes its standing ovation covered in blood. What’s not to like?

Warning: It has been said that some women may find their husbands' insane cackling and snorting during the ending to be in worse taste than the subject matter. Ducknik said she liked the show, but her body language bespoke a different internal discussion. Plotnik loved almost every second.

Mary Poppins it ain't. It also ain't the Honeymoon Suite at the Cinderella/Charming Wedding.

The subject of discussion in the car driving home was what was the absolutely most depraved piece of literature either Plot or Duck could think of. Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolff came up. Pulp Fiction of course. Parts of Hamlet.

Killer Joe isn't any of those, but it does get the conversation started.

As for ratings: Three Stars for the writing, an extra Half for the ending, but subtract a Quarter because one of the characters hit his Blood Pulser a second before the would-be-murderer actually fired the gun, but add back the Quarter for Sharla's keester and her keester's seester.

The Great Plotnik Theater Review Division awards 'Killer Joe' 3 1/2 stars with Many Cackles and Snorts.