Stuart Hughes & Mike Ross. Photo by Cylla von Tiedemann
Reviewed by James Karas
For its second production for 2013, Soulpepper offers Sam Shepard’s True
West. The play moves on several levels from seething sibling rivalry to
a debunking of the American dream. The production, directed by Nancy Palk is reasonably
successful but there are some things that simply did not work.
Brothers Lee (Stuart Hughes) and Austin (Mike Ross) find themselves in
their mother’s house in Southern California. They have not seen each other for
some time and with their mother away in Alaska, the stage is set for a psychological
and physical confrontation between the two.
Austin is an Ivy League-educated screenplay writer. He is reserved and
civilized, one would say, as he anxiously proceeds with his work. He wants to
show a script to Saul (Ari Cohen), a Hollywood producer.
Lee is the opposite. He is a petty thief who lives in the desert and
immediately starts casing the houses in the neighborhood for burglaries. He is
a loud and uncouth drunkard.
Lee does have a literary imagination of sorts and his wild and
improbable story about people chasing each other across the plains of Texas
captures the imagination of Saul. Lee trumps his brother by getting a contract
for his wild idea and Saul asks Austin to turn that idea into a script.
The transformation of the brothers continues as details about the story
are developed and we learn about the fate of their father. The final result is
an eruption of murderous violence.
Ross and Hughes do well in their characterization of the very different
men that they represent and in presenting the transformation of each to the extent
that the brothers take on the persona of the other. Were they the same all along and did the veneer of education
cover up Austin’s real character? One
may well ask.
What was missing from the production was the humour. Lee has a raw,
violent humour and Hughes did not do a very good job in making us roar with
laughter.
Patricia Hamilton appears as the mother near the end of the play. Is the
part badly written, or was she just delivering her lines a bit too
matter-of-factly?
Director Nancy Palk pays attention to all the details of the play from the background sound of the coyotes and crickets to the actors’ reactions. The only complaint is, again, about the humour not coming out as well as it could have.
Ari Cohen does a good job as the producer who represents the shallowness
of American mass culture – give them any garbage or perhaps only garbage and
they will eat it up.
The set is an ordinary suburban kitchen. Lee brings a hefty number of
toasters in one of his nightly tours of the neighborhood and he decides to make
toast using his entire haul. How he manages to connect all of those toasters
must be filed under willing suspension of disbelief.
____
True West by Sam Shepard opened on April 3 and will run until May 4, 2013 at the Young
Centre for the Performing Arts, 50 Tank House Lane, Distillery District, Toronto,
Ontario. www.soulpepper.ca 416 944-1740
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