Poor, Violent and Up for a Dogfight
Ben BrantleyNovember 21, 2014: Lusty soap operas about the crazy ways of sneaky, unwashed hillbillies have gone missing on New York stages in recent years. In olden days, when Tobacco Road ruled Broadway in the 1930s, slick urbanites couldn’t get enough of such moonshine. But now, except for those occasions when Tracy Letts (Killer Joe) is feeling folksy and perverse, that genre has been reduced to festering on reality television. So hats off (preferably accessorized with bullet holes and grease stains) to Keith Josef Adkins, who has reclaimed this rich and odoriferous territory for the stage with Pitbulls. This resplendently foul-mouthed production at Rattlestick Playwrights Theater dares to present, as one character says, “trailer trash in its natural habitat.” That’s Virgil (Billy Eugene Jones), the mean and blackmailing sheriff, speaking to our defiant heroine, Mary (Yvette Ganier), who is the object of desire, fear and derision of many a soul in the Ohio River valley woods where she parks her rusting trailer. Mary is a maker of “real grape wine” (secret ingredient: her own blood), which she has her overgrown son, Dipper (Maurice Williams), sell to passing cars on the offramp.
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