The LSPU Hall is on something of a roll: MAKIN' TIME WITH THE YANKS, AN EVENING WITH DOROTHY AND JAMES and now the Elysian Theatre Company production of Sam Shepard's comedy, TRUE WEST. Once you're hot, you just can't stop rolling sevens and elevens.

Sam Shepard is a writer of gutsy plays of the American west, peopled by lurid and unpredictable characters, liable to explode into violence at any moment. In TRUE WEST Sam Shepard, writer and drifter, splits himself into two alter egos, who clash violently and comically. Brian Downey plays the grubby, beer-swilling hustler who intrudes on his uptight younger broher, played by Paul Rowe, who is engaged in writing screenplays and housesitting his mother's plants. What do you do when the black sheep of the family walks through the door, stealing TVs, borrowing cars, swilling beer, and engaging in various forms of physical and emotional coercion? The answer to the question is an ingenious and mountingly funny exposition on the TRUE WEST and the True Life. Is the True West life or art? Is it the drifter in the desert? Or the scriptwriter in suburbia? Is the TRUE WEST Hopalong Cassidy stories and Kirk Douglas in LONELY ARE THE BRAVE? Or is it Safeways and freeways and watering Mom's plants? Or is it adolescent fantasies to be translated into movie scripts and big bucks -- and successful plays like TRUE WEST?

Ironically, the drifter wants to come in from the heat; and the writer wants to prove his manhood by theft and adventure. So by the second half of the play they have switched positions, with the writer trying his hand at boozing and burglary, while the drifter wrestles with a reluctant typewriter.

TRUE WEST has a clever script. It is exciting and funny, bursting into violence from time to time and mounting to bizarre comic climaxes. You will never see typewriters, toasters, and beer cans used to such comic effect; and you will never see a theatrical set trashed so thoroughly, comprehensively and gloriously as this one is by the end of the performance.

The kitchen set that suffers so much abuse is detailed, solid and professional. Only the fake theatical backdrop seen through the picture window dimished the authenticity -- a detail, perhaps, but noticeable when everything else is so right. The lighting too is good, though I did not care for one of the effects. All the scenes end in a freeze and a slow lighting fade. I found the slow fade annoying. But Philip Hicks, two seats away, liked it. So, for directors and lighting technicians, perhpas it's damned if you do, damned if you don't.

I have deliberately left the best to the last. The highlight of the show is the acting. There are solid supporting roles from Frank Holden as the movie producer and Sheilagh Guy as the bewildered Mom who returns home to survey the wreck of her kitchen and to enjoin her sons not to fight indoors in the midst of murder and mayhem. But basically it is a two-handed play carried by the two brothers. Paul Rowe and Brian Downey as the writer and the drifter, respectively, are superb. Rowe's part is not quite as juicy as Downey's. Rowe plays the restrained, respectable brother, who discovers a potential for larceny, liquor and violence as the play progresses. The part starts low and climbs -- a well crafted performance. Brian Downey as the manic drifter was very, very strong. His performance was, quite simply, remarkable. Do see it.

Directed by Ed Martin, the Elysian Theatre Company production of TRUE WEST continues at the L.S.P.U. Hall until March 9. Curtain time is 8:30.