After a season brimming with high-quality contemporary shows, it would be understandable if PURE Theatre took a break until the fall. Instead, the bleeding-edge company is packing an extra play into its lineup before it begins its fifth season.

Usually, PURE focuses on plays that are new or unfamiliar to Charleston audiences. Their annual Summer Slam window typically showcases work that doesn't fit this mold. Killer Joe, by Steppenwolf actor and playwright (Bug, Man from Nebraska) Tracy Letts, has had time to ferment and gain a following.

Among its appreciators is director R.W. Smith. He enjoys the raw energy of the play, which is packed with violence, humor, and shocking white trash behavior; it's a grind-up of grit and tawdriness that's being billed as a "black and blue comedy."

It all takes place in a trailer home in the suburbs of Dallas, Texas, where the emotionally-bruised Smith family want to bump off a relative with the help of Joe Cooper, a detective who moonlights as a murderer-for-hire. They can't afford his services, but he takes a shine to the family's virginal daughter Dottie. With the girl as a down payment, Joe moves in for the kill.

"Some [audience members] will separate themselves from the Smiths because these characters are poor," the director believes. "But it's amazing, people will turn to violence whatever their status." While they're somewhat dirty and despicable, R.W. Smith says, "they are loveable. They're searching for the same things we all are."

Yet the Summer Slam production presents a different kind of soul-searching from PURE's next show, Conor McPherson's Shining City. That's a subtle, character-studying contrast to Joe's explosive piece of theatre.

"We want to take something that's in-your-face and put it more in-your-face," says the director. "I almost think of a play like this as an intense rock 'n' roll show — I want audiences to feel as if they've seen something and leave it saying, 'Wow! That was an experience.'"

"It's a wild, crazy show," says Rodney Lee Rogers, PURE's co-founder. "It doesn't fit any category." Rogers won't be appearing in Joe, building sets or running the technical tasks that usually make up almost 60 percent of his workload. Smith has been hired as long-term company manager, allowing Rogers to concentrate on writing, acting (he'll star in the self-penned Diary of a Madman in 2008), and non-PURE projects.

"I'm actually taking on more of what Sharon Graci was doing," says Smith. According to him, that will enable Graci, the co-founder and artistic director of the company, to spend more time on fundraising.

"We always knew how to produce," says Graci, "and we learned over the years how to raise money and write grants." The PURE founders are right where they want to be with their "nonprofit stuff," balancing private and grant funding with box office income. The next step is to find a new venue for the company. With the Cigar Factory's new owners planning a condofication of the historic three-story brick structure on East Bay Street, PURE will be forced out of their home in October.

Rogers sees a positive side to the move. For him, there's an artistic danger of getting stuck in a space and being creatively hampered by the same old four walls. PURE has done a lot with its blackbox venue, doing shows in the round or moving its audience from one side to another depending on the kind of show they're doing. But a traveling show or a new venue could give the company a chance to try new things.

Charleston has long had a couple of established "traveling" theatre companies — Actors' Theatre of South Carolina and Art Forms and Theatre Concepts — that don't have a permanent venue. These groups have found that they need a strong focus on marketing to maintain their audience base. Rogers and Graci admit that marketing isn't their strongest suit; they rely heavily on word of mouth to build up interest in their shows during a run. They see the Summer Slam as a good chance to test new marketing ideas before the new season kicks in.

Smith is also looking forward to the opportunity to create theatre in different places. If all goes well, he says, the company will be able to make an announcement soon. Otherwise, we know a little trailer park in Texas with cheap space for rent.

PURE Theatre's midsummer presentation, Killer Joe, brings together much of what the company has become renowned for during the course of its first four full seasons: cutting-edge drama, the town's top actors and productions that are consummately professional in every aspect of live theater.

A powerhouse in two acts, Tracy Letts' exploration of family relationships redefines the idiom. This family is sick, and their relationships went south decades ago.

In director R.W. Smith's extraordinarily capable hands, the story of this bunch of good ol' boys, their wives and exes, kids and dogs, guns without roses, makes a statement that does not simply condemn, it decimates.

Amid flawed logic and failed trust, beer and oil cans, boom boxes and pizza boxes, a perfectly cast company portrays their characters with startling accuracy.

Dad Ansel (David Roach) watches with a degree of distance as his son, Chris (Ryan Mitchell), plans a murder. It wouldn't be much of a mobile home park without second wife Sharla (Tara Denton) exuding venom and sex, unbalanced daughter Dottie (Courtney Fenwick) and a corrupt cop (David Mandel) on a merciless power trip.

The very indifference with with the Fam discusses and executes crime and exploitation chills the soul, and it's all served up with a heaping side of humor.

Oklahoma native and Steppenwolf Theatre resident actor Tracy Letts' 1993 play Killer Joe — his first — has been hailed for its raw mix of humor, drama, and violence; it's been praised as a drastic exhibit of American life in its dark corners. Killer Joe stares bravely, voyeuristically, at what happens when people who have nowhere to go and nothing to lose are backed into a corner. We're as transfixed by the characters' actions as they are by their console TV. Except for a late-act bit of directorial whitewashing, PURE Theatre's summer slam production is a powerful, exceptional presentation of a unique play.

The setup: Chris Smith (Ryan Mitchell) owes serious money to a local drug dealer. When he can't pay up and his life is in danger, he enlists his dad, Ansel (David Roach), in a plan to bump off his mom — Ansel's despised and despicable ex-wife — for her life insurance policy. Ansel's current wife Sharla (Tara Denton) is a manipulator who wants in on the payout. Enter "Killer" Joe Cooper (David Mandel), a Dallas police detective and part-time hitman. When the Smiths can't pay Joe's up-front fee, Joe takes Chris' 20-year-old virginal sister Dottie (Courtney Fenwick) as a retainer until he can get his compensation from the policy payout. Each scene of Killer Joe takes place inside the Smith family's Texas trailer home, creating a growing sense of confinement and suffocation as an unsettling undercurrent of impending dire consequences flows as steadily as the family drains their cans of beer.

Killer Joe showcases some of PURE Theatre's finest ensemble work, with each cast member delivering honest, compelling performances. Mitchell's Chris is tightly wound and flustered, crushed by the weight of both his debt and the knowledge of how he's bartered his sister. As Dottie, Fenwick delicately emanates what Joe sees in her: an innocence (to a fault) that died long ago in other people. Denton revels in Sharla's trashy glory without overplaying her, and exercises some serious dramatic chops, too. Roach plays the creepy, gruff, and abusive Ansel with a grumbling dourness but still manages to lend him some humor. As the title character, Mandel maintains a consistent tone of menace without overt villainy, keeping us guessing.

These are people whose actions involve infidelity, abuse, drug use, and murder. Their surroundings come complete with the ubiquitous barking dog outside and buckets of KFC. It's a specific world that neither playwright nor company exploit or parody but instead mine for drama and even humor.

When, naturally, the scheming, double-crossing, and complications finally come to a head, the results are explosive — or, at least, they should be. Inexplicably, director R.W. Smith and company pull up short here. Rather than deliver the raw brutality of the play's climax — a particularly discomfiting scene of violence and sexual abasement — the lights dim and the stage lights begin slowly strobing, taking us completely out of the dramatic reality of the moment and watering down its impact. This may make the scene more palatable for a local audiences, but it sabotages the climax and prevents the overall production from really packing a punch. It instead makes this play more a comfortable discomfort.

It's not the only alteration that's been to make the play less jarring. A pair of brief nude or semi-nude scenes have been fig-leafed over, presumably for the same reasons. It was likely a tough call for director Smith and PURE, who make much of the company's mission to produce the newest and most edgy dramatic material being written today.

The question is relevant, though: does toning down the violence and eliminating nudity obliterate the very stuff that makes this play what it is? One could argue that without its full, graphic seediness, the play is shorn of its intended impact and meaning. On the other hand, one might argue that the nudity and violence are marginal, merely physical manifestations of what lies at the heart of the characters and the story — and if the company focuses on those deeper aspects of the play, then the surface material can afford to fall away a bit.

Ultimately, what it comes down to is whether the audience notices if something's missing or feels "off." And in this case, something feels distinctly off. Whether it's a line of dialogue that strikes as not sitting right in its context, or an entire scene that feels bizarre, there are noticeable clues that the play has been specially handled for its audience at PURE Theatre.

Still, these changes aren't enough to sour the production as a whole. The ensemble cast works together terrifically, and Smith's direction keeps things tightly coiled at a disturbing level of uneasiness.

"Do you trust me?" Joe asks Dottie. It's an almost humorous question, coming from the hitman who has accepted Dottie as a down-payment and who's about to kill her mother. We never trust him. But at times we almost like him. We like all of them at some point. As dastardly as this family is, as foul as the things they do and say to each other are, they all have moments of vulnerability, humor, and sadness. Maybe we can't put ourselves in their shoes exactly, but at heart the Smiths suffer from the same greed, desperation, loneliness, and hatred that can fill any person's heart. Killer Joe is a strong offering from PURE and a good lead-in to their upcoming season.

If you are looking for something out of the mainstream in plays, Pure Theatre aims to fill the bill.

"Ugly, obscene, disturbing" are a few words director R.W. Smith uses to describe Tracy Letts' dark comedy "Killer Joe," opening Friday at Pure Theatre.

But Smith guarantees audiences will have a raucous good time in this black and blue comedy strictly for mature audiences.

"It's a roller-coaster ride of violence and suspense," he says. "This dirty, very realistic play contains characters who are so rich in their complexities to the degree it should push audience members to re-evaluate themselves."

Set in a trailer park in Texas, "Killer Joe" tells of a dysfunctional family in which the son, Chris; the mainly stoned daughter, Dottie; father, Ansel; and stepmother, Sharla, all want to kill Ansel's ex-wife, Adele, also the mother of Chris and Dottie, so they can collect on her life insurance policy. To carry out this scheme, they enlist the help of Killer Joe, a policeman and part-time assassin who demands an unusual down payment before the murder is committed.

"It was initially Chris' idea to kill his mother because he owes a great deal of money to a drug dealer," explains Smith. "The others go along with it because they all hate Adele, who was never a good mother and, in fact, she tried to kill Dottie when she was a baby."

The director says he feels that the play's message is how easily some people will turn to violence when their back is financially against the wall.

Of his role of Killer Joe, David Mandel, a regular performer with Pure Theatre, says, "Killer Joe is a detective with the Dallas Police Department, which is convenient because he can often investigate the very murders he has committed."

Mandel says the play is no more outrageous than "The Sopranos," and some films and other plays.

"Letts' writing is a lot like that of Quentin Tarantino and Sam Shepard in that it combines violence with some twisted, sick humor," adds Mandel. "The script calls for full frontal nudity, but we aren't doing that. Also, the violence is toned down somewhat with the focus placed on the strong characterization."

Having started his career as an actor at the Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago, playwright Letts wrote the play "Bug," which had a good run off-Broadway, and "Man From Nebraska," which was a finalist for the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for drama. In the role of Sharla is Tara Denton, who appeared in plays as part of the College of Charleston's Shakespeare Project, and has been an associate artist with Poor Players Theatre Company in San Diego. Playing Dottie is Courtney Fenwick, a recent graduate and theater major at the College of Charleston, where she was seen in "The Children's Hour," "Blood Wedding" and "Medea."

Ryan Mitchell in the role of the nefarious Chris is also a graduate of the College of Charleston, where he directed a production of "Bug" and appeared in "King Lear," "Hotel Paradiso" and other college productions. David Roach, who plays Ansel, is a longtime member of the improv group Theatre 99 and has acted in productions around town such as "Fuddy Meers" and "Lives of the Saints."

Mandel worked three seasons with the New Jersey Shakespeare Festival and nine years in Los Angeles at the Met Theatre, HBO Workspace, the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, Los Angeles Theatre Center and the Egyptian Arena Theatre before returning to his native Charleston.

"Killer Joe" will run Thursday, Friday and Saturday through Aug. 4 at Pure Theatre.

directed by R.W. Smith

ENSEMBLE

Tara Denton
Courtney Fenwick
David Mandel
Ryan Mitchell
David Roach

Following in the bloody footprints of PURE's first Summer Slam show (AMERICAN BUFFALO), KILLER JOE takes it up another notch with this tense, darkly comic thriller set in a trailer park in Texas. With a storytelling style reminiscent of Sam Shepard, KILLER JOE is by acclaimed Steppenwolf actor and playwright Tracy Letts (MAN FROM NEBRASKA, BUG). A palate cleanser of a violent summer treat between Season 4 and Season 5.