True West, Sam Shepard's Darkly Comic Look at Sibling Rivalry
Promenade Playhouse (1404 Third Street Promenade Santa Monica, CA 90401)
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- $20.00
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All offers for True West have expired.
The last date listed for True West was Saturday May 12, 2007 / 7:00pm.
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1 Goldstar Member Review
Nancy
I didn't feel the description was an accurate synopsis of the play.Written on May 07 2007
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More Information About True West
Description
With equal parts humor and intensity, True West dissects the American Dream and the divide it creates between imagination and reality. Sam Shepard's most popular black comedy is a gritty examination of two warring brothers. Through the power struggle between Austin and Lee, True West brings the question of cultural and individual identity into sharp focus.
Like most Sam Shepard plays, True West ambles along in its quirky, edgy, humorous way, but it's charged with a sense that there's dynamite in its basement; the only question is when will it go off? As Austin and Lee circle each other warily (while coyotes yip nearby), they start trespassing on each other's psychic territory until eventually they trade places: Lee manages to mess up Austin's latest screenwriting deal by pitching a movie idea of his own (one that promises to resurrect a true West that hasn't been seen in movies in a long time); meanwhile Austin, tired of being perceived as an over-civilized sissy, sets out to prove he can be a better petty thief than his big brother.
Sam Shepard's work has always referred to the icons of a peculiar American mythology -- cars, movie stars, horses, cowboys, whiskey, cops and robbers, rock-and-roll -- and to the very American themes that orbit those icons: wealth, fame, crime, trail-blazing, freedom, rootlessness. In that vein, True West is partly about the mythology of the American West and its degradation at the hands of pop culture; but even more it chronicles a high-noon showdown between two halves of a divided psyche that Shepard claims as his own. Shepard has lived with his own fractured identity through a 35-year career that has seen him go from rebellious author of short, shocking experimental plays to Pulitzer-Prize winner; from part-time rock-and-roll drummer to movie star; from would-be cowboy to owner of a large horse ranch in Minnesota.
Presented by the Atlas Theatre Company
Directed by Hezekiah Lewis