“True West,” one of playwright Sam Shepard’s most lauded works, focuses on two brothers in conflict.
It takes place in a tidy home in the California suburbs, circa 1980.
Austin is a scriptwriter and buttoned-down family man. While housesitting for Mama (Ann Brandman), who’s away in Alaska, he spends his time at a typewriter, toiling away at his latest screenplay.
Lee is an overwrought drifter. He blows in like a tumbleweed, smelling of booze.
With veteran local actor Alex Monti Fox as Austin and California transplant Brandon Karrer, a newcomer to island theater, as Lee, this play boldly grabs for the audience’s notice.
Karrer inhabits his role with a lusty swagger and magnetic glint in his eyes, making it clear that Lee is trouble waiting to happen. He threatens and cajoles to get his way, imposing himself on Austin’s producer (Jim Aina) with a pitch for a screenplay of his own.
While Austin initially seems mild, Lee’s provocations lead to a shocking moment of violence, leaving the room crackling with the threat of danger.
The two actors lock horns, and as they jockey for power, begin to resemble each other.
Each scene ends with the two silhouetted as though in a duel, facing each other. Are they really separate people, or metaphorical shadows of the other?
“True West” can be viewed as the duality of a creative mind, pitting a complacent, pragmatic side against a vibrant, unmoored id.
The play’s characters exist in an American shadowland somewhere between reality and myth. Common to Shepard’s works, “True West” is at once bleak and ferociously funny.
This production, directed by Kevin Keaveney and presented by The Actors Group, is dynamic and noisy. If you prefer to stay out of the fray, sit toward the back of the house.
“True West”
Where: Brad Powell Theatre, Shops at Dole Cannery
When: Through Oct. 28
Cost: $20-$30
Info: taghawaii.net, 722-6941
