True West (play)

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True West is a play by American playwright Sam Shepard. The play is a more traditional narrative than the type of plays that Shepard had written. But like most of his works they are inspired by myths of American life and popular culture.

[edit] Plot

True West is a comic nightmare of confrontation. The play is about two brothers: Austin is an ambitious Hollywood screenwriter working on a potential million-dollar deal when an ill wind off the desert blows in Lee, a hobo thief with a six-pack and a case of sibling rivalry. The conflict arises when a film producer offers Lee to write a "true" western. In a role reversal as intricate as it is riveting, the brothers head toward Shepard's outrageous version of the Western movie showdown.

[edit] Performances

True West was first performed at the Magic Theatre in San Francisco, where Shepard was the resident playwright. It had its world premiere there on July 10, 1980. It was originally directed by Robert Woodruff. It later moved to Joseph Papp's The Public Theater in New York City, where it starred Tommy Lee Jones and Peter Boyle.

It was revived by the Steppenwolf Theatre Company, in 1982, with then fairly unknown actors Gary Sinise (who also directed the production) and John Malkovich playing the leads. With Shepard's approval, this production made a big splash when it transferred to New York, where it opened at Cherry Lane Theatre. It ran for 762 performances and, later in the run, the leads were taken over by James Belushi, Gary Cole, Erik Estrada, Dennis Quaid and Randy Quaid. The production was so successful that a television recording (featuring Sinise and Malkovich) aired on PBS.

In 2000, Philip Seymour Hoffman and John C. Reilly played the leads on Broadway, where they switched parts every so often during the run. They solicited to share a single joint Tony Award nomination for Best Actor in a Play for the production, but were instead each nominated individually. This revival was also nominated for Best Play and Best Director (Matthew Warchus).

In 2003, Wilson Milam took a lavish and updated production (replacing the smashing of a typewriter with a modern working laptop, and using 20 working toasters) to the Bristol Old Vic with Phil Daniels as Lee and Andrew Tiernan as Austin. The production caused the Bristol Old Vic to remove the first 3 rows of seats for fear that the audience would be harmed and installed a Perspex shield for safety reasons. It did however receive much critical acclaim from the British National Press and was cited as Pick of the Week in The Guardian newspaper (October 27, November 2, 2003).

Bruce Willis starred in another television production that aired on the Showtime cable channel.