TribLIVE: Brothers. Booze. Buttered toast.
All three play a large part in Sam Shepard's “True West,” the latest in Pittsburgh Public Theater's Masterpiece Season.
This volatile drama, directed by Pamela Berlin, builds to a crashing climax, dragging the audience along the way. Here, the standard American dream of success — house, family, career — is challenged by a less-civilized dream of a frontiersman who can make it anywhere, even in the desert.
2 comments:
Not sure if this is exactly on topic, but this was the last play I tried to act in, so it holds a fond place in my heart. Although I'm not sure why since I forgot my next line halfway through the pivotal "toast" scene which resulted in a very awkward couple of minutes of vamping from my opposite. The show spoke to me as a kid because of my own relationship, or lack thereof, with my older brother. At a distance of ten years, a sibling who seems out of another time, another generation with a different set of values, was a theme to which I could relate. I always thought Shepard was actually giving voice to two sides of his personality in this play, though I have no real research to back that up. It's been a long time since I thought about this show, and the time in my life when I thought differently about a lot of things, my family, my brother, art, literature... Maybe I'll try to go see it closing night. End of semester present to myself.
I saw a production of this back in Toronto and was greatly disappointed. After running through in my mind its strength and weaknesses, I believe the fault lies in the writing. For some reason, I am just not taken by the plot. I find that both brothers are written as mere archetypes rather than real people. Be it the frustrated Hollywood writer or the annoying kleptomaniac, the characters seem to exist on a very shallow plane. I also cannot seem to trace what Sheppard is trying to say with this script, is it a comment on the nature of brotherhood, greed, creativity, or even deception?
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