Principals shine in a tale of fraternal friction
Author: Sian Prior, Neil Jillett
Date: 28/04/2002
Publication: The Sunday Age


What: True West Where: Fairfax Studio, Victorian Arts Centre, St Kilda
Road Southbank When: Until June 1 Bookings: 1300 136 166 Tickets: $32 -
$45.40 Rating: ****

WELCOME to Sam Shepard's creative universe. Interesting place to visit,
but believe me, you wouldn't want to live there. This prolific American
playwright specialises in conjuring up tragic loners and dysfunctional
families, and True West is no exception.

It's the third in Shepard's trilogy of family plays, written in the late
1970s. The Melbourne Theatre Company's new production is directed by
Malcolm Keith Kay, and David Wenham and David Tredinnick, (best-known for
their respective TV roles in Seachange and The Secret Life of Us) play the
two brothers who are the central characters.

True West is a complex melodrama, in the original sense of the word. The
music (melos), performed by a five-piece ensemble including composer Iain
Grandage and guitarist Doug De Vries, is integral to the drama, mirroring
the changing moods of the characters. Lee (Wenham) is a small-time
criminal who returns to his mother's home, where his younger brother
Austin (Tredinnick) is working on a screenplay. Austin hopes to sell his
love story to Hollywood producer Saul Kimmer (Ross Williams), but when Lee
edges him out with a script idea of his own, an old-fashioned western,
Austin's world starts falling apart.

There is a nightmarish quality to the action in True West which takes it
beyond predictable psychological realism. Although some of the themes are
familiar - warring siblings and their competition for the affections of an
absent father, for example - the way those tensions are played out is
unexpected. In the opening scene, Austin sits hunched over a typewriter
while his older brother rocks on an old rocking horse, staring into the
distance. In the second act the roles and positions are exactly reversed,
as Lee struggles to make something of his chance at redemption, and Austin
tries to drink himself into oblivion.

Dale Ferguson's ingenious set design includes a tiered floor of sand. It
cleverly evokes both a child's sandpit and a desert landscape, which in
turn could be seen as symbolising Lee's alienation from civilisation and
Austin's desire to escape from the Hollywood Babylon. As many critics have
noted, Sam Shepard is ever-critical of The American Dream, and there is an
inherent irony in the play's title. There is nothing truthful about the
plot of Lee's western, and Austin's fantasy about retrieving his manhood
in the desert is equally hollow.

Julia Blake and Ross Williams give fine performances in their small roles
as the helpless mother and the opportunistic movie producer. Wenham is
riveting as the amoral Lee. He is the embodiment of barely-suppressed
violence, his tongue flicking in and out like a snake poised to strike.
Tredinnick's Austin is a more sympathetic character, longing for his
brother's affection but bullied by Lee's aggression and both actors effect
convincing transformations in the second act. Rachel Burke's lighting
design leaves us with memorable images of the two brothers, alone in
shafts of light, staring into the darkened distance.