Mad, bad, and dangerous to watch

A corrupt inspector calls for a down and out trailer park family in Tracey Letts' (August Osage County et al) 1993 debut play.

Set in the stuffy Southern trailer of the Smith family, Killer Joe is the disturbing tale of a family in crisis. Chris, the eldest brother, comes to his father Ansel with a plan - he's heard about his estranged mother's life insurance, and if they hire this bent cop to dispatch her, they'll both be in for a windfall, as long as the naive sister Dottie doesn't discover the scheme. But when they're unable to put a deposit down up front, the mysterious assassin - Joe - takes Dottie, and her virginity as collateral, sending the already unstable Smiths into ever escalating chaos.

A fiery and blistering attempt to shock from a young (at the time) playwright, it feels now that Killer joe's lasting appeal is about as thin as the trailer walls. The characters, hideously unlikable except for the lone innocent manic pixie dream-hick Dottie, although the cast range from exceptional - Chris (Adam Gillen) to surprisingly passable (Bloom) nothing can really make up for the distressing and affectedly smug content, even when it is well executed (sound and lighting designers should really get a headline credit for their excellent work on this).

The problem isn't with Bloom in the cash-grab role of Joe - a southern gothic Inspector Goole - swapping his bare bottom for more on seats, he is actually a fairly talented actor (!) but the world Letts weaves around this diabolical monster is hard to navigate and harder still to watch. There are the obvious takeaways - no one person is black and white; good or evil, people will do anything for money etc etc, but it felt like this could have been achieved without some fairly horrific sexual violence and 'shocking' nudity. Other shows have proved this - disturbing content can work on stage, but in this day and age, watching a woman fellate a piece of chicken with tears falling down her cheeks feels at best, heavily misguided, and at worse, tone deaf to the world outside.

Despite this, and my own vehemence that I hated it as soon as I left the theatre, I do have to hand it to KJ. It has made me think and there is something about a piece of theatre that gets a visceral reaction, however extreme. And although this is one 90's revival I won't be watching again, I might just recommend it to my more thick skinned friends, though perhaps fans of Legolas may want to give it a miss.

View our show pages for more information about Killer Joe, Trafalgar Studios 1.