Two of Sam Shepard’s lesser-known plays, Killer’s Head and The Unseen Hand, are brilliantly performed by the Odyssey Theatre Ensemble as part of its ongoing “Circa ‘69” season of “significant and adventurous plays that premiered around the time of the company’s inception.” Directed by Darrell Larson, produced by Ron Sossi and Bo Powell, the two plays have been brought to life in vigorous fashion, thanks to the expert acting by the members of the Ensemble, starting with Steve Hovey. The latter held the stage in Killer’s Head, a ten-minute monologue spoken by a prisoner awaiting death in the electric chair. Though he’s on the verge of extinction, his last thoughts are all about life (the trucks he drove and loved). Hovey expertly captured the power and poignancy of these last words. (Five other actors will rotate in this demanding role). In The Unseen Hand, Shepard’s world, a mixture of realism, poetry and phantasmagoria, comes alive in a burst of smoke, garish light and hillbilly music. The setting is a junkyard where sits the rusted hulk of a ’51 Chevy convertible, home to a raggedy-dressed old geezer, Blue Morphan (Carl Weintraub). We learn that he once was a gunslinger, a mythic figure of the West. Now homeless and bereft in modern-day Azusa—“Everything from A to Z in the USA”—he is suddenly confronted by a space freak named Willie (Matt Curtin), who babbles on endlessly about distant planets, sorcerers of the High Commission and black magic. Poor Blue doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about, but offers Willie a bit of hospitality anyway. Next to enter is Cisco Morphan (Jordan Morgan), one of Blue’s brothers. The last Blue saw of him was a hundred years ago, when he and another brother, Sycamore, “were gunned down in the street right in broad daylight.” Now Cisco has come alive in the modern world, a fate that also befalls Sycamore (Chris Payne Gilbert), who makes an appearance dressed in black like Bat Masterson and waving a pearl-handled revolver around. He is keen to reorganize the family gang and get back to what they do best, “robbin’, rapin’ and killin’,” except that this time we “won’t make no mistakes. We stick to trains and forget about banks and post offices.” Blue can only scoff at that notion and point out that “there ain’t no trains anymore.” There is only this junk yard in Azusa, a ruined corner of earth where outcasts like Blue, Willie and the Kid have washed up. The latter (Andrew Morrison) is a sorry, ludicrous representative of the modern world: “a drunken high school cheerleader” with pants pulled down around his ankles and a head filled with profanity and violence. The Unseen Hand is about the impossibility of the past reconciling with the present, and the spiritual death of the American Dream. These typical Sam Shepard themes are boldly dramatized in the Odyssey’s production, which is noteworthy for its expert direction and flawless acting. This is little theater at its best.
