Robert Tanitch reviews True West at Tricycle Theatre, London NW6
Sam Shepherd is one of America’s leading playwrights and his subject, as always, is the death and betrayal of the American dream. True West, the blackest of black comedies, which dates from 1980, is the story of a confrontation between two brothers along what might be called Cain and Abel lines.
Austin (Eugene O’Hare) is a screenwriter on the point of having a Hollywood breakthrough when his brother, Lee (Alex Ferns), a rootless loner and petty thief, who has been living in the desert, comes home after five years and ruins everything for him.
The film producer drops his script in favour of a verbal outline by Lee and then expects Austen, since Lee is illiterate, to write the first draft. The outline is crap; but then, as Lee points out, unlike his brother, he doesn’t want to make a film, he wants to make a movie. “Hollywood makes movies,” he explains. “Leave the French to make films.”
Austen and Lee are both afraid; each separately thinking he is the only one who is afraid. They play off each other, ready to do battle, driving each other to insane violence. The second act is an orgy of destruction. The assistant stage managers have a hell of a mess to clean up after each performance.
Phillip Breen’s revival, which was originally seen at Glasgow’s Citizens Theatre, has a cinemascope look and within its wide frame Ferns and O’Hare keep a close hold on the audience’s attention.
Shepard wanted the sounds of Coyotes barking during the scene breaks; but surely he didn’t want them as over-amplified as they are here.
The last time True West was revived in London twenty years ago Mark Rylance and Michael Rudko alternated the roles, emphasising not only what Austin and Lee do in the play (I.e swap roles) but also making clear Shepard’s own statement of intention doubly clear:
I wanted to write a play about double nature, one that wouldn’t be symbolic or metaphorical or any of that stuff. I just wanted to give a taste of what it feels like to be two-sided. It’s a real thing, double nature. I think we’re split in a much more devastating way than psychology can ever reveal. It’s not so cute. Not some little thing we can get over. It’s something we’ve got to live with.
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