‘True West’ at Theatre Exile (second review)

Stevenson’s concept also had a geographical aspect, reflecting his city of Edinburgh, which was split between two parts: the medieval section where crowded slums were rife with crime, and the Georgian area of wide streets representing respectability.

Shepard, similarly, focused on geography. His script specified a setting "40 miles east of Los Angeles" — the locale of Duarte, where Shepard spent his teens. He wrote, “Southern California towns have stuck with me,” and he complained in an interview that “the California I knew, old rancho California, is gone.”

His characters repeatedly find themselves at a loss as they try to locate familiar surroundings. “This country's been built up. Built up? Wiped out is more like it. I don't even hardly recognize it,” one says.

Again, later in the play: “I keep finding myself getting off the freeway at familiar landmarks that turn out to be unfamiliar. Wandering down streets I thought I recognized that turn out to be replicas of streets I remember.” There’s a noticeable loss of guideposts, whether they be street signs or family connections.

True West is very much placed in the 1970s, when the conversion of ranchos to strip malls was taking place. Younger audience members may have trouble relating. I heard of at least two young people who walked out in the middle of a performance.

For them and for many of us, a disconnect occurs early on in this play, when the apparently successful Austin is confronted by his derelict brother, Lee, whom he hadn’t seen in five years. Lee bullies Austin to lend him his car. Austin refuses. Austin then relents and hands Lee the keys. Within the play’s first ten minutes, the conflict’s outcome was determined — surrender came much too early.

A second problem is Austin quickly turning to booze. Alcoholism as a refuge is too easy an out, dramatically speaking. Lee is a drunk, as the playwright says his own father was. But making Austin into one as well is, again, a cop-out. Austin’s progressive evolution was smithereened before the play was halfway through.

This drama includes dark humor, with jokes about toast, missing teeth, and searching for a pen. This production spotlighted that aspect. This is not the only way to play True West, but it’s a legitimate interpretation.

Many of the laughs came from the physicality of the action. “Hurling of bodies, hurling of insults, threats and accusations, hurling of luggage and clothes and belongings" — that’s an accurate description of this play, all right; but it’s actually a quote from Carol Rocamora’s review of Shepard’s Heartless in 2012. The playwright does to tend to repeat himself.

Brian Osborne was Lee, the sleazy brother. Osborne is by trade a carpenter and construction worker rather than a full-time actor and seems appealingly rough. I’ve seen the mannered John Malkovich as Lee and much preferred the unheralded Osborne. The most touching Lee, apparently, was Philip Seymour Hoffman in 2000 whom, alas, I did not see.

Jeb Kreager played Austin, the meek screenwriter living a responsible life with a wife and children and babysitting houseplants for his mother. Joe Canuso was properly business-driven as a film producer. E. Ashley Izard contributed a brief but disturbing image of a clueless mother.

For another review, by Jackie Atkins, click here.