True West by Sam Shepard.

True West by Sam Shepard.
Director: Philip Seymour Hoffman. Set Designer: Richard Roberts. Costume designer: Alice Babidge. Sydney Theatre Company. Wharf 1 Sydney. Nov 2-Dec 18, 2010.

Violence begins at home, as does the STC’s production of Sam Shepard’s True West. This modern fable of conflict between brothers updates the Cain and Abel tale and sets it in the kitsch kitchen of a bungalow in the sprawling suburbs of Los Angeles in 1980. Brenan Cowell plays Austin (Abel), a budding screenwriter, who has left his family behind in Oregon to stay at his mother’s house whilst she is away in Alaska. His older brother Lee (Cain), played to the hilt by Wayne Blair, drops by and visits havoc upon the lives of others.

The brothers bear the mark of their estranged parents, who were cast out into the garden state of California and sentenced to isolation and damnation. Lee and Austin are locked in their own eternal struggle, as each attempts to overcome the other, as they tumble towards their own damnation. Lee is an outcast and drifter like his father. He’s a psychopath lacking any empathy for others, but capable of charming a Hollywood producer into buying his screenplay based solely on his verbal pitch. This is a feat of truly biblical proportions. Lee is also a bully and to get his way with Austin or others he can be truly terrifying. He unleashes his charm and terror in tsunami like waves throughout the play. Wayne Blair burrows into Lee and inhabits him fully.

Austin lacks Lee’s charm and power to terrify, but, like his mother, he’s a homebody who dreams of adventure in faraway places. He aspires to artistic success and has relocated to LA to achieve his dream. He’s on the verge when we first meet him, until Lee descends upon him like all seven plagues upon the Pharaoh. Brenan Cowell shows us an Austin who is like a cornered animal, blinkered to the true dangers confronting him.

This never-ending story has relocated from the fringes of the Garden of Eden to the suburban lawns of LA and into a kitchen straight out of the early 1970s. It’s a marvelous set by Richard Roberts and the whole one hours and forty minutes of the play takes place in this apparently mundane setting. The warring brothers are surrounded by psychedelic wallpaper, brown glazed pots, blenders and a plethora of potted plans that Austin must care for like orphaned children.

But the creative fertility that Austin feeds is continually undermined and finally stomped on by Lee. Even the tools of creation fall victim to the terrible vengeance Lee wrecks upon his confused and cowed brother. Austin’s survival instinct finally stirs him to fight back and Lee momentarily becomes his victim.

In the end there is no grand biblical resolution, just the promise of more of the same for the rest of their lives - and beyond.

Stephen Carnell

Photo: Alan Dukes, Brendan Cowell and Wayne Blair in Sydney Theatre Company’s True West. Photo by Brett Boardman.

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