Too Good to be True

True West

By Sam Shepard

Directed by Jed Weintrob

In The Adams House Kronauer Space

Tonight and tomorrow night at 8:00

Austin (Kevin Connell) is an uptight Ivy grad struggling desperately to sell his romantic "period piece" to a Hollywood producer. Lee, (Alex Norman) his older brother, is a macho, beer-guzzling thief with considerable disdain for Austin's sheltered intellectual life. When the brothers get holed up together in their mother's house, sparks fly. Insults fly. Silverware, toasters and golf clubs fly, too. By the end of Sam Shepard's True West, the kitchen is a disaster area worthy of any Harvard undergrad's living quarters. Not even the cast from Risky Business could clean up this mess before Mom got home.

Leave that problem to the stage crew. As a show with a social conscience (all proceeds go to benefit the Massachusetts Coalition for the Homeless) and an action-packed human conflict, True West really works.

Its best drama comes from Norman. His intensity never wavers as he portrays Lee's elaborately constructed facade of scummy, violent toughness. Lee is a hardened pioneer--one never doubts his stories of adventure in the American desert, the "true" West of this play's title. Yet behind his belching, swaggering bravado, Norman allows Lee's well-concealed dream of respectability and acceptance to leak through his psychological defenses.

Connell's performance is also effective, although Norman's explosive presence dominates the stage. As Austin, he nicely portrays the character's outer conflict between halting his brother's moral decline and saving his own career. He also copes with his deeper problems of dealing with his unseen father's alcoholism and destitution and his own dissatisfaction with his staid family life.

The claustrophobic Kronauer space is ideal for Shepard's theme of escape, which is particularly prominent in True West in the brothers' arguments about the keys to Austin's car, their only means of exit. Director Jed Weintrob traps the audience in the kitchen with the two brothers and has captured the herky-jerky rhythm of Shepard's dialogue.

Weintrob's effective staging is evident in a pivotal scene where, to Austin's dismay, Lee barges in on his negotiations with Sol, (John Byrd) the effete producer. Austin's worst fears are confirmed, as Lee quickly wins Sol's friendship with good-natured masculine bombast. By the end of the scene, the brothers' mutual jealously has surfaced, and Weintrob has hidden Austin in the background, where his consternation is initially barely noticeable but soon becomes a focus of attention. Lee, however, has established himself as the "man of the house."

Although the supporting cast cannot match the brothers' intensity or composure, its members are adequate. Byrd is not quite slimy enough as the money-hungry producer, but he does a nice job in his second-act apologies to Connell. Eliza Clark, who plays the brothers' mother, makes her inevitable appearance late in the second act. Her deadpan senility (She has come from Alaska to the oppressive Midwestern heat without removing her winter coat) is difficult to accept, but she wisely remains in the background during the fascinating resolution of the brothers' conflict.

If you're looking for action and theater this weekend, catch True West in the Kronauer space. It's true drama.