Bloom bares all in a hollow, violent tale
Killer Joe Trafalgar Studios
Orlando Bloom is treading the boards in the West End for the first time in more than a decade. That’s a tantalising prospect for fans of this chiselled La-based Brit – globally recognised thanks to his roles in The
Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit and Pirates of the Caribbean. But the added kicker about this homecoming – in which he stars as a bent Dallas detective and part-time hitman in Tracy Letts’s tar-black comedy Killer Joe – is that he gets his kit off.
As a result of that notorious “paddleboard” snap of Bloom in his birthday suit, proudly manoeuvring his oars behind partner Katy Perry in 2016, you could say that the 41-year-old’s more salacious admirers have already been amply served. Still, those who yearn to see Bloom in the flesh now have the chance to do so, at least from behind.
By that point, the eponymous anti-hero has become a fixture in the very broken home of trailer-park “trash” the Smiths. In exchange for a repugnant hit (Smith Jnr and Smith Snr casually decide to do away with the latter’s ex, the former’s mom, in order to get her life insurance), Joe has taken up with Dottie, the 20-year-old brain-damaged daughter of the family as a “retainer”, pending the job and big pay-off. His nakedness isn’t a sign of weakness but of conquest.
That’s only half of the explicit nudity, though: the author also requires Sharla, the partner of slob-patriarch Ansel, to pad about knickerless, and “Killer Joe” has a creepy dinner-date with Dottie, coolly bidding her to get changed, and strip, in front of him.
At the time that it first made waves on the British stage, in 1995, critics fell over themselves to laud the Oklahomaborn playwright for his unflinching portraiture of the American underclass, without glossing over the imbecilities of the desperate and ill-educated. That was the argument used to justify the amoral comedy of the piece as it hurtles within a claustrophobic grotty kitchen to a violent, thrashy denouement.
It was compared – only to its advantage – with Sarah Kane’s goresoaked Blasted, which had just opened to angry denunciations. Yet more than 20 years on, Kane’s play has acquired the status of a modern classic, whereas
Killer Joe looks even more meretricious than it did first time round, despite the efforts of director Simon Evans to give it plenty of Southern Gothic menace.
Bloom makes his rugged, strutting presence felt throughout – every inch the handsome, brooding devil. Yet it doesn’t feel like there’s much going on under the surface, and his most repugnant behaviour – almost choking Neve Mcintosh’s Sharla with a chicken leg in a simulated act of fellatio – leaves the nastiest taste.
As the clueless, drug-dealing younger Smith, Adam Gillen reprises too much of the maniacal business he brought to Amadeus at the National. Only Sophie Cookson as the sweet, cynically exploited Dottie gives you much psychological food for thought. That chance to see Bloom aside, it looks like a quintessential summer filler.