Fresh Kills follows the best traditions of American realist theatre in its sharp dialogue, gritty plot and accurately observed details of language and domestic tragedy. The play is beautifully constructed and focuses on four characters: Eddie, Marie, Arnold and Nick.
      Eddie and Marie are married but have had their ups and downs. In the first few moments of the play Eddie achieves an orgasm after a blow job by Marie. Sounds good, but as the play develops their sex life proves to be in general a lot less interesting and satisfying for either. Marie turns out to be a mixture of philanthropy (she is seeking to become a member of Women's League and part of her bid is to show innocent concern for Arnold, the boy Eddie has picked up on the internet) and shrewishness. She is always on the brink of nagging Eddie, about kitchen cupboards, extended drinking and his work-shyness. Eddie, on the other hand, bemused by her attitude and seeking sexual consolation, has become involved with a sixteen-year minor, Arnold, on a gay web-chat. In the second scene they meet and what Eddie hoped would be a quiet consolation becomes instead another tangled web.
      Arnold is confused youngster, whose broken middle-class family has driven him to become a gay prostitute. But it's not so simple as he is also innocently looking for as much consolation for his troubled life as Arnold. He is looking to be loved, not just have sex, and he is trying to find it through trading his good looks. But though Eddie and Arnold are looking at one level for the same utopia, their initial premises are very different. Arnold is gay, or is at present. Eddie is not, though may be, but at present either doen't know or can't admit it as at least part of sexual make-up. Their relationship crackles with tension, frustration and fear. No wonder they spent a good deal of time shouting at each other.
      Arnold's increasingly petulant and dangerous approaches to Eddie finally lead to his trying to give Eddie a blow-job in the parking lot outside the rubbish dump, Fresh Kills. They are discovered by the police, but are rescued from jail and exposure by Nick, a macho policeman and Marie's brother. He's Eddie's oldest friend, and though he has had a gay fling in his football team-days, he would not class himself as a 'faggot', and asks Eddie if he considers himself one. The answer both give is no, but a doubt lingers about whether either has any real access to the truth, or if there is a truth to be found.
      Nick refers to Arnold's long police record, and for a moment the audience is invited to consider that they have been as duped by Arnold's innocent fore-play just as Eddie has been. The wordly-wise Nick paints Arnold as an old pro in the procuring market, who has just worked his charms on Eddie, the latest in his conquests. But both to Eddie and the audience the situation seems different, and Arnold seems at least as vulnerable and confused as Eddie. Perhaps that's what draws them together and makes Eddie honour his pledge to take Arnold camping as a faux-boy scout. For a brief moment it looks as though Eddie and Marie might even take Arnold under their wing and give him the family he so much wants; but, of course, the premise for such an outcome is poised on a precipice over which they all fall when Arnold in a rage reveals the truth, or part of the truth, about how he and Eddie met. The end is arguably inevitable and gruesome, but it solves nothing. The dilemmas, misunderstandings and tensions remain even after the dramatic final moments. That's life, at least in gritty realist plays. 
      Fresh Kills (a richly symbolic title) sizzles with tension, whose writing by Elyzabeth Wilder is superbly terse with a real ear for tingling dialogue. It is magnificently honed in on the main characters and their immediate difficulties, but it manages to suggest symbolically a wider context for their distress. Trapped in poverty on Staten Island at the bottom of the social heap, Eddie and Marie are struggling to get out as best they can. Marie's social climbing and desire for the smart kitchen which she can show off to her new 'friends' says as much about her as the fact that a number of significant events take place outside the New York dump, Fresh Kills. The characters are struggling not to be dumped or dump themselves, but eventually one of them does. Eddie is subtly contrasted by the more successful, richer and personally more at ease with himself Nick, the cop.
      The play lasts ninety minutes and throughout it crackles with tension. The energy never falters, neither does the audience's absorption. Each actor explores his/her world to perfection.
      Phil Daniels as Eddie is morose and ill-tempered, but he leaves enough room for him to suggest inarticulately he might escape this by both balancing the reluctant Marie against the ardent Arnold. Nick, played with swagger by John Sharian, is smooth and confident, even managing to brush off the unmentionable gay encounter of his youth in the process of forging Eddie's escape from disaster. Marie is the perfect social climber and is deftly portrayed by the excellent Nicola Walker. She conveys the innocent, hard-done-by shrewish wife to perfection. She is the one who is wronged, yet somehow she manages to limit the audience's sympathy till the touching moment when she dresses Arnold up to meet the Women's League. Oh, if only they, or she, knew!!
      Matt Smith, making his stage debut, makes a brilliant Arnold. He is just young enough looking to be a convincing sixteen, and he blends Arnold's knowledge and ignorance in a masterful performance. Part of the shock at the end is that we know that Nick was wrong. Arnold was on a el-dorado journey of his own to escape his sordid life and unhappy childhood, and the wholesome offer of a family, a lover and a camping trip might just have been his rainbow-gold. But it was not to be. Matt Smith's balancing act between street-gay and battered-youth is brilliantly maintained throughout.
      This was a scorching piece of group acting in a tersely written play of furious power and pace. It was a richly satisfying theatrical night. More Elyzabeth Wilder please!
Roderick Swanston