Ensemble Theatre September 12
9/10
Simon Maiden’s Lee creates a tension thick with latent violence; a black hole of negative energy. His blank eyes stare with hate and resentment. “You go ahead, like I wasn’t even here,” he tells his brother Austin (Darcy Kent), who’s trying to write a screenplay, but Austin may as well try to imagine a world without sibling rivalry.
In Sam Shepard’s supreme 1980 True West, Lee, the elder brother, is the daredevil, wastrel and lost soul capable of physical violence and minor criminality. He lobs in on the college-educated, mild-mannered Austin, who’s house-minding – plant-minding, primarily – for their mother while she’s in Alaska. Austin’s using her southern California bungalow as a writer’s retreat to nail down a love story which already has interest from a producer, Saul (James Lugton).
But hard-drinking Lee has a story of his own, and he gazumps Austin by selling Saul on the idea of a modern-day western that’s one big chase sequence – a metaphor (although he doesn’t know it) for the lifelong game of chase the brothers have been playing.
I can’t imagine three consecutive nights of high-calibre theatre more disparate than the oneiric Orlando, the bluegrass poignancy of Bright Star and then True West. If you only see one, make it this. It’s directed by Iain Sinclair, who did the Ensemble’s memorable The Caretaker three years ago, and there are overlaps between Pinter and Shepard. They both like characters who struggle to communicate, and whose frustration breeds aggression.
Shepard consummately structures his play so that when Austin joins Lee on his drinking binge (after Saul’s favoured Lee’s movie idea), the gulf between their characters shrinks and until the similarities seem to outweigh the differences. But that only masks underlying resentments.
Maiden and Kent are riveting at walking the seesaw of power imbalance between them. There’s a moment late on when Kent is on his knees, staring up at Maiden, his performance so potent you can see in his eyes the ghost of the hero-worship he once had for his brother.
Lugton’s Saul is the sunbeam of humour blazing through the storm clouds in wide-collared paisley shirt and perfectly pressed cream trousers (courtesy of designer Simone Romaniuk). Lugton adds matching bonhomie and bravado – at least in Saul’s dealings with Austin. Lee can’t so easily be tamed by smiling promises.
Alas for the brilliant Maiden, a medical emergency forced him from the stage near the end, halting the show for 20 minutes, after which Sinclair read Lee (in costume), and commendably saw the fraternal war to its inevitable conclusion. This includes the unexpected return of the boys’ mom, played by Vanessa Downing, who probably didn’t have to work too hard to be in a state of shock after what had happened to Maiden, and who completed a stellar cast fulfilling Shepard’s manic vision: a snapshot of a US that can tear itself apart.
Until October 11.