The opening line of “Ninth and Joanie” is “It’s dead out . . . there’s nobody nowhere” — and boy, is that the truth. The characters in Brett C. Leonard’s suffocating drama are helplessly trapped by circumstances. By the time it’s over, you’ll feel the same way.
It’s being presented by the Labyrinth Theater Company, which specializes in gritty urban dramas laced with despair (“Jesus Hopped the A Train,” “The Motherf**ker With the Hat”). This effort, set in South Philadelphia, is no exception.
The speaker is Rocco (Kevin Corrigan), who’s just come home from a funeral, his body covered in welts and bruises. The deceased was his mother, a suicide; Rocco’s grieving father, Charlie (Bob Glaudini), sits in the dark wearing swimming goggles, smoking a cigar and listening to Vic Damone’s recording of “An Affair To Remember.”
For the first 20 minutes virtually nothing happens, save for Rocco’s fiddling with a Ouija board in near-darkness.
Relief comes briefly with the arrival of Rocco’s brother Michael (Dominic Fumusa), an ex-con who murdered the drunk driver who killed their sister Joanie years before. But he doesn’t stay for long, though his shocking way of departing briefly jolted some theatergoers awake in time for intermission.
Directed by Mark Wing-Davey in such willfully ponderous fashion that it feels almost hostile, “Joanie” is like an acting-class parody of a dysfunctional family drama. The talented actors are adrift, with Corrigan, in particular, seeming nearly catatonic. Oh, wait — that was me.