Chris Vognar

03:41 PM CDT on Monday, June 12, 2006

By CHRIS VOGNAR / The Dallas Morning News

The exploitation in Raw Vision, the main attraction in Kitchen Dog's New Works Festival, covers all kinds of ground: artistic and economic, racial and social. But none of it fits neatly into any ideology or narrative format. Visceral and packed with rich language and ideas, this thick bowl of New Orleans gumbo makes for a pungent night of theater, even if the themes and story don't always coalesce as you'd like.

JUSTIN COOK/DMN

Bryan Pitts (left) and Ashley Wood let their performances build in Kitchen Dog Theater's Raw Vision.

Written by Louisiana State University theater professor and Sam Shepard scholar Leslie A. Wade, Raw Vision is set in Louisiana, and it climaxes with a devastating storm. Yet the ideas and interactions on display have been around since well before Katrina.

Sassy, brutal Miriam (Kellydianne Smith) passes her days in a shabby shack surrounded by sugar-cane plants, alternately caring for and abusing her hulking, mentally ill brother, Royal (Bryan Pitts). Royal passes his days drawing apocalyptic pictures with marker pens and banging on a drum in a dilapidated shed that he's emblazoned with the words "Armageddon Here." It's not what you'd call a healthy relationship, and it gets a jolt with the arrival of Wallace (Ashley Wood), a scheming white man who sees a potential gold mine in Royal's outsider art.

Some of the reference points are familiar, including mentions of Elvis Presley and slavery reparations. But Mr. White and the co-directors, Kitchen Dog artistic directors Tina Parker and Christopher Carlos, manage to keep the audience off balance with shrewd choices that stay away from predictable resolutions. The ideas may not all click into place, but they're layered over the work like an intellectual minefield.

Not that Raw Vision's power source is all above the neck. All three performances build in intensity as the play progresses, and all three actors excel in exhausting roles. Body language is key here. Ms. Smith is all coiled defiance, Mr. Wood runs the gamut from elastic and buoyant to slumped and defeated, and Mr. Pitts, working his mouth in silence, cowering to the world, mixes danger and abject fear. Meanwhile, the sounds of whirring insects and the sweat on the actors' faces place us firmly in Bayou country.

Raw Vision also creates raw power with its verbal imagery and vulgarity. "He should be in a jar of formaldehyde like a two-headed puppy," Miriam says of her brother. She washes Wallace's clothes because "It smelled like you had a pocket full of dead birds." Maybe Royal is right. Perhaps Armageddon is indeed here, in a swampland shack full of bitter dreams.

E-mail cvognar@dallasnews.com

Through July 1 at the McKinney Avenue Contemporary, 3120 McKinney Ave. $15 to $20 for adults, $10 to $15 for MAC, STAGE, KERA, DART and TCG members and $8 to $10 for students and seniors. All tickets are general admission seating. 214-953-1055, www.kitchendogtheater.com.