Nothing To Shout About
What drives the Luna Theater Company's revival of Trus West? Just yelling, apparently.
"I always wondered what it would feel like to be you," one brother says to the other. The dynamics of sibling envy — as well as tattered illusions about Hollywood, the American West and home — drive Sam Shepard's oft-produced True West.
What drives the Luna Theater Company's revival? Just yelling, apparently.
Brothers Austin (Eric Court-wright) and Lee (Chris Fluck) meet at their mother's home ("Faith, Hope, Love: What Families Are Built On," a wall placard announces ironically), where screenwriter Austin housesits while Mom (Susan Moses) vacations. Petty criminal Lee arrives looking for opportunities to burgle the neighbors and "borrow" from his brother. When slick producer Saul (Steve Gleich) prefers Lee's ridiculous pitch for a modern western to Austin's period romance script, the brothers viscerally trade places.
Director Gregory Scott Campbell's production defines neither the brothers' juxtaposition nor their evolution. Fluck's angry, lurching caveman could never charm Saul into a golf game, let alone a movie deal, lacking the cunning bad-boy swagger that Austin is supposed to envy. Courtwright's milquetoast Austin likewise advances little, merely adopting Fluck's shouting as he abandons writing to steal the neighborhood's toasters.
My throat ached in sympathy, but I felt little else; yelling does not equal passion.
Gleich's Saul is distinguished by a brief moment of erotic interest in the understandably uncomfortable Austin, while Moses' talents are largely squandered in an effort to seem daffy as the boys' befuddled mother.
Brandon Phillips' square, bland set is compromised by an extra row of seats so close that all of the play's action on the floor is unseen by most of the audience. Scene endings lack definition, with Andrew Cowles' lights fading midaction, as if by accident, and The Three's original country music is largely wasted — though the song that opens Act II, "In the Shadow of My Mind," proves haunting.
True West premiered in 1980 and shows its age: Hollywood cynicism has been done better ("It's not a film, it's a movie," Saul proclaims, "leave the films to the French"), and the world's finite number of manual typewriters (bashed nightly by Lee with a golf club) will someday run out. Revivals should be reserved for productions willing and able to reveal Shepard's themes and characters with insight — not just volume.
True West, through May 27, Luna Theater Company, Walnut Street Theatre Studio 5, 851 Walnut St., 215-704-0033, www.lunatheater.org
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