Like the play itself, the title of "True West" has layers of meaning. True West refers to a mythic place where might be sought the American Dream of a new, successful life. A place, too, where rugged individualism could be parlayed into an idealistic future. A reference to many a movie that has pictured the "True West" as site of elemental struggles to subdue nature and human nature, where good guys struggle against bad leading to a fortuitous showdown. "True West" has the power to create archetypes to inspire artists. More prosaically, it suggests a publication full of macho types and pulp fiction.
All the meanings converge in Sam Shepard's take on the Cain-Abel myth in the lost West/Eden of an L. A. suburb. Working in and tending his mother's house while she's in Alaska, ultra-neat Austin (sincere Eric Hissom, clean-cut and proper) is away from his family up East. A degreed writer, he's about to solidify a long-nurtured lucrative romantic screenplay deal when older brother Lee (greaser-like but strangely charming R. Ward Duffy, brown-leathered with teeth to match) clops in.
Dysfunctional like their failure of a father, who's also a desert denizen, Lee wants to borrow nervous Austin's car keys. Having already cased his mom's but found nothing valuable, Lee obviously is set on prowling to steal. He gets his way when it's the only way Austin can get rid of him and be alone dealing with Saul Kimmer.
Duffy's always-cocky Lee hints he could "persuade" that producer or, if he didn't go for Austin's idea, offer his own commercial but "true-to-life stuff."
In purple shirt and off-white leisure suit, Saul (J Bloomrosen, looking the part but mostly drawing a blank on it) seems mildly interested in Austin's script but perks up as Lee bursts on the scene with a TV. He corners Saul's attention by asserting he has an idea for a great, true mod movie. He describes an old western, the last
good one he'd seen. Then he cons fascinated Saul into an early next morning of golf.
Whether by force or fortune, Lee succeeds in selling his script idea to Saul, along with the notion that Austin will help him shape it. Lee's struggles to convey the story show the central dramatic conflict. He now obviously wants to be a writer like Austin but can blurt out only a hackneyed, far-from-true account of brothers fighting and unlikely chases. Sibling rivalry reigns as Lee announces Saul has dropped Austin's scenario and bought Lee's idea (that is, Hollywood's false notions of the True West).
When it becomes clear that Austin must do the writing, credited or not, he becomes disheveled, angry, and engages in marathon drinking. If the real West is dried out, why not Austin's career and family life, too?
As he changes into Lee, the actually self-hating Lee tries to write like Austin. His attempt, sidelined by trying to phone a woman, leads to trashing the place (a challenge well met by Banyan's tech crew). Austin meanwhile steals a line-up of toasters.
(Hissom is hilarious making and buttering a loaf of sliced white. A true, crazy-for-carbs breakfast.) He's wildly desperate to go to the desert, like a coyote heard among the crickets whose sounds so annoy Lee.
Into the chaos comes Nina Hughes' rather blank Mom into a comic scene that gets almost immediately serious. She's returned to her plants, but they're now dead (symbolically as well). Still, Mom's keen on all going to see Picasso, whom she's heard is in town. Of course, he's dead. (A link with the death of the "united" artist the two brothers could have become? Or does the continued separateness of the family foreshadow the final physical struggle of the brothers?) Will either go to the desert, endure the true wilderness, and unlike their father, have an elevated experience?
It's easy to see in the many twists of plot and characters' personalities (so strongly presented here) the influence of author Shepard's early actor training. In "transformations," actors had to switch immediately from one type of character -- and sometimes situation or action -- to another. The technique certainly works in Shepard's scripting. It's beautifully realized in Chris Dolman's direction, especially of Banyan Theater Company's co-starring actors.
