No Way Out

When you’re already on the margins of society, there’s no room for error. Or weakness, for that matter.

Dramatically speaking, the realm of the disenfranchised has been over-exploited in recent years--often to gratuitously grimy effect. Writers--particularly playwrights--love a good wallow in squalor and suffering.

But sometimes a work comes along that revitalizes what has often been a sadly generic portrayal of the poor.

Judith Thompson’s “The Crackwalker,” which recently reopened at the Met following a prior run at the Gardner Stage, establishes a beachhead in society’s lower depths and examines them from a bleakly effective perspective. Director Olivia Honegger and her exceptional cast approach Thompson’s potentially overwrought drama with absolute authority, preserving a keen balance between the harrowing and the excessive.

Thompson’s no-man’s-land is a small town in Eastern Canada, where two downtrodden couples struggle to keep their footing from one minimum wage paycheck to another. Brutalized and ignorant, Sandy (Rachel Malkenhorst) and Joe (Randy Irwin) engage in a pathological round of abuse and reconciliation. Poverty of vocabulary has not decreased their capacity to wound with words--although fists are also deployed in this spousal war.

However, Joe and Sandy are paragons of stability compared to their pals Theresa (Wendy Johnson) and Alan (Tom Lenoci). The mentally deficient Theresa, who has already had one child taken away from her by social services, marries the doting, slow-witted Alan and has his baby--a sure and stomach-turning recipe for disaster. Haunted in nightmares by his unbalanced alter ego (Alex Fernandez), the sweet but unformidable Alan eventually slips through the “cracks” into madness and violence.

Thanks to Honegger’s taut staging, the performers astound us with their collective intensity--particularly Lenoci and Johnson, whose unsentimental portrayals render their characters all the more pitiable. Devoid of family or financial reserves, the denizens of “The Crackwalker” are forced to negotiate a downward path in a burned-out landscape, ever mindful of the pitfalls beneath.

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BE THERE

“The Crackwalker,” Met Theatre, 1089 N. Oxford Ave., Hollywood. Thurs-Sats, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 7 p.m. Ends Sept. 7. $15. (310) 289-2287. Running time: 2 hours, 20 minutes.