True West

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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.

Lee meets Saul, the movie producer who has been collaborating with Austin, and charms him. Lee ends up winning a bet against Saul in a round of golf, the victory granting Lee a chance to write a screenplay of his own for Saul to produce. Austin is happy to hear the news until he discovers that, because of this, Saul is dropping his project to make room for Lee's. Over the course of that evening and into the next morning, the two brothers drink themselves into a stupor and argue and fight as Lee struggles to write his screenplay with his brother's assistance. In the morning, their mother returns from her vacation early and discovers the house is a mess, but she is too senile to care in the way a normal person would. Austin ends up strangling Lee with a telephone cord, but Lee lives. The play ends with Lee standing up and scowling at Austin. Austin scowls back and the lights go down, the two brothers standing in the darkness.

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 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).

Bruce Willis starred in another television production that aired on the Showtime cable channel.

Character summaries

Austin:

• Lee's younger brother
• early 30s
• married with kids
• lives in northern California
• screenwriter; has been working on a screenplay for several months
• dresses nicely ("light blue sports shirt, light tan cardigan sweater, clean blue jeans, [and] white tennis shoes")
• house sitting for his mother while she is in Alaska

Lee:

• Austin's older brother
• early 40s
• single
• unemployed drifter; doesn't enjoy staying in one place for too long
• enjoys breaking and entering; steals appliances from the neighbors
• unkempt in appearance; ("filthy white t-shirt, tattered brown overcoat covered with dust, dark blue baggy suit pants from the Salvation Army, etc.")

Saul Kimmer:

• late 40s
• Hollywood producer
• enjoys golfing
• originally has a deal with Austin, but drops that project in favor of Lee's proposal

Mom:

• early 60s
• mother of both Austin and Lee
• on a cruise throughout most of the play
• excited about possibly seeing Pablo Picasso
• enjoys keeping potted plants and collecting antiques

References

Texts

• Shepard, Sam (1984). Seven Plays. New York: Bantam Books. ISBN 0553346113. 

External links

• True West at the Internet Broadway Database
• True West (play) at the Internet off-Broadway Database

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