True West

Arts
March 15, 1986, The Newfoundland Herald
A measuring stick for other shows.
By Philip Hicks

Without doubt the best piece of straight theatre I've seen in Newfoundland. True West by the Elysian Theatre Company, of course.

Rising Tide tends to rely on spectacle for effect and forgets the acting. The RCA's successes depend to a large extent on in-jokes or knockabout, and on the two sure-fire ingredients of politics and religion; the acting is usually ham, carried along by the set-up of the situations.

Now Ed Martin has brought in Sam Shepard's play and with his team of four -- Brian Downey, Paul Rowe, Sheilagh Guy and Frank Holden -- has given us highly polished theatre, acting in depth, imaginative direction, plenty of belly-laughs and a memorable evening's entertainment.

How's that for a grumpy old critic? Well, I can promise the grumps will continue for those people who fling a pail of slops in the public's face and pretend they're professional actors and actresses. That's just what True West has pointed up.

Sad to say, the play is over. The dates were such that it couldn't be reviewed before. However the show was so significant that something must be put on record about it.

True West deals with the infighting between two brothers -- Austin, a clean bespectacled writer of scripts, who is just about to clinch a deal with a movie director; and Lee, his hard-drinking, scruffy elder brother, one of life's cowboys. The action could be described as an updated version of the Prodigal Son, with enough sting to upset every preacher from here to Kingdom-come.

Lee drops in on Austin from nowhere, and half in joke tries his hand at a film scenario. The movie director promptly takes it and the roles of the two brothers are reversed. It is now Austin who takes to the bottle.

As with most of Sam Shepard's work, while this play is not strictly autobiographical, it reflects much of his family background and his own tensions at the time of writing.

True West was completed in 1980. The previous year the author had received the Pulitzer Prize for Buried Child, and had in addition become a movie star overnight -- by being himself -- he just cowboyed his way through it.

Till then Shepard had dashed off his scripts any old how, more than 40 in 16 years. Now he was famous, and if not establishment, at any rate the hottest playwright on the job.

It affected him. True West, his next play, was rewritten 13 times. This hadn't happened before. The spectre of Austin, earnest and industrious, haunted him and the action turned into a fight between the two sides of himself -- was the cowboy really going serious, respectable, stolid?

Which is why Sam Shepard ends the play with the two brothers facing each other in deadly confrontation. He couldn't finish it any other way; he doesn't know how it will end.

True West opens just after Lee has dropped in. The lights come up and there is complete silence as the two brothers are seen, one writing and the other drinking, stretched out on the dresser top -- a mute statement of the tensions to come.

The silence also gave notice of the nicely orchestrated pauses and variations in pace we were in for all through. For once we had time to register the subtleties of the acting.

Brian Downey as Lee put on a spectacular show. He was free and easy, lazy, indifferent; he was provocative, elated, demanding, frustrated, warm and friendly, explosive and quiet -- the lot, with an effortless switching from mood to mood.

Something I shall remember for a long time came towards the end. Pent up emotionally, he stood there with the fingers of his hands splayed and every muscle in his limbs and body tensed. I can't remember what he said. It doesn't matter. What he had to say had already been expressed visually.

Paul Rowe also showed his ability. By comparison -- Sam Shepard likes the cowboy in himself -- Austin's role was much more difficult to play. Lee gets most of the fireworks, while Austin has to hold himself in.

His part is one of growing anxiety, as Lee invades his life, takes over, and finally destorys the one thing that he is good at. In the background -- as with Shepard in real life -- there is a sot of a father, a failure, who haunts both the sons. Will they turn out the same?

Paul Rowe's acting was a modulated study in disintegration. As a part it was the opposite of what he did in Mass Appeal, when he was the disrupter.

But he came into his own in scene seven, when he drinks himself stupid on the kitchen floor -- a beautiful performance. Later he bets Lee he will steal a taoster, and scene eight opens, not with one, but with 10 toasters in a row along the counter top.

With those two scenes the show peaks. All along there have been funny incidents, but now they climax into a non-stop flow of belly-laughs. Everything has gone wrong. Lee has battered the typewriter to pieces. There are 30 to 40 beer cans lying around, along with 20 pieces of burnt toast.

Into this shambles steps Mom, the owner of the house and mother of Austin and Lee. Sheilagh Guy adds her memorable performance to the other two. Small in stature, carrying two suitcases, she enteres and surveys the shambles. The timing, the silences, the pan expression, the flat voice -- all were just perfect.

Frank Holden plays the movie director. It's tough on him. He only plays in a couple of scenes, maybe three, and he can't help being overshadowed by the other three.

There were so many brilliant touches of acting and direction. I had better warn readers. Reference will be made again and again to this production, as a measuring stick against which other shows will be judged. And Ed Martin isn't stopping here. Apparently he's only just starting to get into his stride.