Tracy Letts, one the country’s hottest playwrights, is on a roll here in Houston. First a production of his play called Bug won huge fans at Theatre Southwest last season. And the Alley Theatre opened the playwright’s Pulitzer Prize-winning August: Osage County to glowing reviews earlier this year. Now Big Head Productions is opening Killer Joe, one of Letts’s most devastatingly funny and provocative productions ever. The story follows a trashy Texas trailer-park family of nitwitted losers as they fumble their way through a murder for hire. High on weed, beer and television reruns, they call on the skills of Killer Joe Cooper to save the son who gets in some serious debt to the wrong people. Killer Joe, a detective by day and a gun-for-hire by night, agrees to off the target but finds out the family doesn’t have any front money for the job, so he decides to take their nubile 20-year-old daughter as a down payment of sorts. The show, which The New York Times called “compellingly watchable” and “a pungent reminder that characters in the theater don’t have to be poetic or even passionate to hold your interest,” has full frontal nudity and graphic violence. 8 p.m. March 30. Through April 16. Obsidian Art Space, 3522 White Oak. For a full schedule, call 832-889-7837 or visit www.obsidianartspace.org. $15.
Thursdays-Saturdays. Starts: March 31. Continues through April 16, 2011