Crushing Grain and Slasher Blend Violence And Dark Comedy With Mixed Results

Comments (0) By Elaine Liner Thursday, Nov 26 2009

...continued from page 1

Daylon Walton

Oswald lookalike Nick Jones reenacts a familiar 1963 scene.

Details

Crushing Grain continues through December 5 at the Dallas Hub Theater. Call 214-749-7010.

Slasher continues through December 12 at Kitchen Dog Theater. Call 214-953-1055.

More About

Spillman, KDT's fallback ingenue (though she's getting too long in the tooth to pass for 30 much longer), reaches into a familiar bag of overacting tricks to play the Christian crusader lady, then a car hop, a movie extra and some others. New York transplant Hury, as the film director desperate to wrap his low-budget thriller, is believably smarmy. He has his best moments opposite wiry Dallas actor Drew Wall, who plays an overeager production assistant suddenly thrust into acting out the movie's most gruesome killings. The best performance in the show comes from gamine actress Rebekah Kennedy as Sheena's younger sis, having a devil of a time studying for SATs while her mother sets the timer on the family's destruction. She's the quiet touch of normalcy in this crazy zoo, and she's funny.

It's no surprise that Slasher copycats a typical slasher movie climax. It is surprising how badly it does it. The big machete that last bloody character wields could be put to better use slashing away at the script.