Sweet Thursday
Book-It at Theater Off Jackson, 325-6500.
Through April 29.

A follow-up to John Steinbeck's 1946 novel Cannery Row, Sweet Thursday's innocent yet realistic flavor resembles William Saroyan's wholesome 1943 novel The Human Comedy. Both works evoke a wartime-era sensibility, but the Steinbeck setting--a poor fishing town peopled by drifters and nonprosperous types amid a surrounding culture of postwar plenty--makes this play socially relevant today vis-à-vis our current cultural mania for material success.

Book-It's smooth presentation of Steinbeck's toothsome prose is lovely. Down 'n' outers Mack (Eric Ray Anderson), Eddie (T. J. Langley), and other folk rally around their educated biologist friend Doc (Kevin McKeon) after he returns from the war, hanging on his every word. Without guile or ulterior motives, the townies aid in all manner of schemes so Doc can win Suzy (Dodie Montgomery), a woman who joins a whorehouse run by madame Fauna (Mary Machala). Much of this story is dated, but in the foreground is Steinbeck's careful narrative and the vulnerable Cannery Row characters who care for each other so openly, with the same care biologist Doc lavishes upon the sea creatures he collects and studies.

Though sparkling characters make this play worthwhile, Sweet Thursday feels long, and some of its scenes seem not as crisp as they could be, or padded with excess dialogue. But over the course of the evening, the play grew on me, and it was clear that Book-It fans and faithful subscribers in the audience were really entertained. Ray D. Gonzales is seriously impressive in a dual role as Joe Elegant and Patron--this actor is quietly magical onstage. Machala looks promising at first as Fauna, but ultimately seems unsure how to reckon the character's simultaneous toughness and softness, and winds up playing her neutrally and blandly. Other actors fill out the production nicely, and director Myra Platt assembles them onstage in ways that ensure Steinbeck's lyricism isn't lost. STACEY LEVINE

Killer Joe
The Empty Space, 547-7500.
Through May 19.

Killer Joe is an over-the-top sendup of trailer-park folk. In order to pay off a threatening supplier, penniless dope dealer Chris (Matt Ford) comes up with a harebrained insurance scam and easily talks his father into hiring a gun to kill his mother. Enter the slick, psycho cop/assassin Joe (Kelly Ellen Boulware), who insists on taking Chris' sister Dottie (Jen Taylor) as a retainer until the $20,000 assassin's fee is paid. The sleazy cop moves into the sleazy family trailer, and eventually a bloody mess ensues. First-time playwright Tracy Letts swept the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and other venues, including off-Broadway, with his broad comic stereotypes and mayhem, proving that, as Jerry Springer discovered long ago, Texas trash is kinda fascinating.

Empty Space scenic designer Peggy McDonald goes to town on Killer Joe's set, with well-imagined details right down to the family's nausea-green, fake wood kitchen cabinets. Ford's red-faced, grimacing characterization of the beleaguered Chris is really wonderful, and Taylor suggests the mysterious interstices of Dottie's spacey mind quite well. The play has some enigmatic erotic moments between Dottie and Joe (and between Dottie and brother Chris), but it also has disgusting scenes of men beating women, an abuse-crazed girl offing her brother with a handgun, and (sorry to give away the big moment, but you oughta be warned) a violently forced blowjob with a chicken leg. All of which brings up this question: Does the script's deliberate political incorrectness go anywhere or accomplish anything besides its goal of being in our faces, so politically incorrect? I say no. A script like Fargo is the gold standard for the dark comedy that Killer Joe strives to be, with its cruel, lamebrained crooks and regional parody, but that dramatic work has heart and something resonant to say about life. Killer Joe does not. STACEY LEVINE

"Art"
Seattle Repertory Theatre, 443-2222.
Through April 28.

The Seattle Rep's program guide to "Art" has not one but two articles about monochromatic art, both of which simultaneously apologize for this branch of abstraction (and its apparent fraudulence) and plead for a deeper understanding of it. Which is curious, because "Art" is not about art. It's about three middle-aged men bickering about art; it's about friendship and taste and which of these has a stronger hold on their hearts. The play's success on Broadway is both pathetic and honest: On the one hand, who gives a shit about the ego battles of three upper-middle-class white men? On the other hand, the average theatergoer is middle-class and white; don't these people deserve to see their own kind depicted on stage, grappling with problems they might actually face in their lives?

The impeccable cast makes this nasty squabble entertaining. Laurence Ballard, as the man who bought the white-on-white painting the other two find absurd, demonstrates his gift for making the Seattle Rep seem intimate, and injects his character with a wealth of persnickety nuance. John Procaccino backs up disdain with just enough emotional and intellectual rigor that you have to take what he says seriously, but not so much that his motivations aren't called into question. And R. Hamilton Wright manages to make sheer haplessness an engaging and sympathetic trait. Kurt Beattie directs the sparring with well-suited simplicity.

Yet I'm torn about the play. I could criticize its not-very-effective verbal repetitions or its less than subtle psychologizing, but overall it draws a revealing web of social discomfort that is both well observed and funny. I just wish this web caught something more substantial than these particular flies. BRET FETZER