True West (play)
| True West | |
|---|---|
| Written by | Sam Shepard |
| Characters | Austin Lee Mom Saul Kimmer |
| Date premiered | July 10, 1980 |
| Place premiered | Magic Theatre San Francisco |
| Original language | English |
| Genre | Drama |
 | This article needs additional citations for verification. (December 2008) |
True West is a play by American playwright Sam Shepard. Like most of his works it is inspired by myths of American life and popular culture. The play is a more traditional narrative than most of the plays that Shepard has written.
Plot
True West is about the sibling rivalry between two estranged brothers who have reconnected. Austin, the younger brother, is a Hollywood screenwriter writing a screenplay while house sitting for his mother, who is vacationing in Alaska. His older brother, Lee, appears at the house after the two have not seen each other for years. Lee is a drifter and thief and has been living in the desert. The two are not on good terms, but Austin attempts to appease his older brother, who is more dominant.
The play also has parallels with James Joyce's "Finnegan's Wake". These include an absent father, about whom accusations have been made (HCE), a distracted mother (ALP) and two competing/warring brothers (Shem and Sean) who, in contrast to Cain and Abel, cannot be killed as they are really the same person. The fifth character in True West is the girl who cannot be found or contacted, this too parallels the fifth character in Finnegan's Wake - Issey.
Performances
True West was first performed at the Magic Theatre in San Francisco, where Shepard was the resident playwright. It had its world premiere there on July 10, 1980 [1]. It was originally directed by Robert Woodruff and starred Peter Coyote as Austin, Jim Haynie as Lee, Tom Dahlgren as Saul Kimmer, and Carol McElheney as Mom. The production later moved to Joseph Papp's The Public Theater in New York City, where it starred Tommy Lee Jones and Peter Boyle.
It was revived by the Steppenwolf Theatre Company, with then fairly unknown actors Gary Sinise (who also directed the production) and John Malkovich playing the leads. With Shepard's approval, this production made a big splash when it transferred to New York, where it opened at Cherry Lane Theatre. It ran for 762 performances and, later in the run, the leads were taken over by James Belushi, Gary Cole, Erik Estrada, Dennis Quaid and Randy Quaid. The production was so successful that a television recording (featuring Sinise and Malkovich) aired on PBS.
In 2000, Philip Seymour Hoffman and John C. Reilly played the leads on Broadway, where they switched parts every so often during the run. They solicited to share a single joint Tony Award nomination for Best Actor in a Play for the production, but were instead each nominated individually. This revival was also nominated for Best Play and Best Director (Matthew Warchus).
In 2002 Bruce Willis and Chad Smith starred in a television movie version staged as a play, filmed in front of a live audience and directed by Gary Halvorson with Andrew Alburger and Danielle Kennedy in supporting roles.
In 2003, Wilson Milam took a lavish and updated production (replacing the smashing of a typewriter with a modern working laptop, and using 20 working toasters) to the Bristol Old Vic with Phil Daniels as Lee and Andrew Tiernan as Austin. The production caused the Bristol Old Vic to remove the first 3 rows of seats for fear that the audience would be harmed and installed a Perspex shield for safety reasons. It did however receive much critical acclaim from the British National Press and was cited as Pick of the Week in The Guardian newspaper (October 27, November 2, 2003).
References
Texts
- Shepard, Sam (1984). Seven Plays. New York: Bantam Books. ISBN 0553346113.