True West
\nby Sam Shepard
\nFlying Penguin Productions
\nThe Studio, Holden Street Theatres, Hindmarsh, Adelaide.
\nMay 2 . Tickets $18 – $28.
\nBookings BASS 131 246 or Venuetix 8255 8888
\nUntil May 16.<\/p>\n
Increasingly, it seems, professional theatre in Adelaide is looking to the efforts of dedicated individuals. With only the flagship State Theatre Company and a small and under-resourced scattering of second-tier outfits, the city has always depended on the kindness of free-lances. Significant among them has been David Mealor\u2019s Flying Penguin Productions. Over the past four years he has been responsible for a succession of high calibre stagings of contemporary classics \u2013 including Brian Friels\u2019 Translations, Pinter\u2019s The Birthday Party and an ambitious production of Stephen Sondheim\u2019s Assassins.<\/p>\n
Opening at Holden Street Theatres is Mealor\u2019s latest – Sam Shepard\u2019s 1980 masterwork, True West, a darkly funny, corrosive study of two brothers. Austin, an aspiring screenwriter is trying to finish his breakthrough script in their mother\u2019s house in suburban LA when he is visited by his shiftless, criminally psychopathic brother, Lee – back from the Mojave Desert. Shepard described True West as a play about \u201cdouble nature\u201d and, as the two brothers claw at each other to take possession of a screenplay contract, all manner of dualities emerge. In what has been called Shepard\u2019s allegorical realism, everything is bifurcate \u2013 art and business, civility and violence, West Coast and True West, there are even grim echoes of Cain and Abel.<\/p>\n
Prowling each other in Kathryn Sproul\u2019s intricately detailed seventies-style kitchen design(expansively lit by Mark Pennington) the two brothers are exposed in their primitive need to be accepted by each other, their absent cruel father, and the urban society that has no time for losers and runts. The opening scene, prefaced by bursts of dueling banjo and mandolin and later, (also from composer\/performers, Cameron and Tristan Goodall) implosions of Ry Cooder-style electric guitar, establishes the ever-brooding sibling animosity.<\/p>\n
Renato Musolino\u2019s Austin, in beige slacks and earnest spectacles, is all fuming restraint as he attempts to resist Nick Garsden as Lee, teasing and probing with flicks and punches, both verbal, and actual, as they niggle each other ever further towards the convulsive struggle of the final scene.<\/p>\n
The performances are excellent. Garsden\u2019s Lee manipulates and hustles the big-time producer Saul (another well-observed cameo from Geoff Revell) but he mixes a wounded vulnerability in with the malice. And as Austin, Musolino\u2019s ride towards chaos and breakout, manically harvesting toast from sixteen stolen toasters while drunkenly proclaiming his escape plan, is outstandingly handled. As the mother, exempting herself from her murderous whelps, Chrissie Page also contributes strongly to the sardonic and disturbing poise of David Mealor\u2019s meticulous production.<\/p>\n
Murray Bramwell<\/p>\n
\u201cBrothers and other strangers\u201d, The Australian, May 4, 2009, p.30.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
True West by Sam Shepard Flying Penguin Productions The Studio, Holden Street Theatres, Hindmarsh, Adelaide. May 2 . Tickets $18 – $28. Bookings BASS 131 246 or Venuetix 8255 8888 Until May 16. Increasingly, it seems, professional theatre in Adelaide is looking to the efforts of dedicated individuals. With only the flagship State Theatre Company and a small and under-resourced scattering of second-tier outfits, the city has always depended on the kindness of free-lances. Significant among them has been David […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,5,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2340","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adelaide-companies","category-archive","category-theatre"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2340","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2340"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2340\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2341,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2340\/revisions\/2341"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2340"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2340"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}