by Jordana Rosenfeld
Photo by Garrick Schmitt
It’s a slow burn, but chaos eventually brings down the house in Playbox Productions’ gripping rendition of True West, Sam Shepard’s classic dark comedy about familial resentment. It’s a strong sophomore showing for the independent company, which is currently in its first season. Directed by Samuel GC Muñoz, True West is playing Downtown at Three Stories Theater until October 4.
The play focuses on the relationship between two estranged brothers, Austin and Lee, as they attempt to coexist while staying in their childhood home.
Screenwriter Austin (Playbox founder Marc Palombo) is house-sitting for their mother in the San Gabriel Valley and working on his next script when his brother, charismatic if disheveled hustler Lee (Braxton McCollum) drops by. Austin feels put-out by Lee, who resents being viewed as a liability and would prefer to be left in peace to prowl the neighborhood looking for houses to burgle. Neither will say what they mean and both seem haunted by the shadow of their father’s abject financial ruin in the Arizona desert and whatever conflicts led to their estrangement.
Things begin to spin out of control when Lee crashes Austin’s meeting with movie producer Saul Kimmer (John McManus) and convinces Kimmer to play a round of golf the next day so that Lee can pitch his idea for a Western.
The Mojave desert is a thematic and aural motif of the story; Lee has reportedly just returned from living several months in the desert, which seems to captivate Austin. His romantic ideas about what it would be like and mean to disappear and live off the land mirror Lee’s insistence on reviving the genre of the Western and its “true to life” people chasing each other across the American West’s mythical expanses. While Lee and Austin bicker, they also unpack the glamorous stories the men have projected onto each other as their fortunes have diverged since childhood. We hear the crickets beckoning from the literal and metaphorical wilderness beyond the house in Britt Pierce’s sound design.
McCollum is magnetic as the short-tempered Lee, ricocheting between extremes of rage and mirth as he manipulates those around him, eventually horrified by his own success as the dog that caught the car. Starting the play buttoned-up and somewhat repressed, Palombo is at his best in the second act as he mines comedy from Austin’s short-circuiting following an unexpected career reversal. Nancy Julian plays their mother in an amusing late-second-act appearance, making a refreshing return to performing after a 35-year career managing costume departments.
The play takes place entirely in the kitchen, with the playing space extending deep into the downstage corners of the Peirce Theater’s three-quarter thrust setup. The set, by designer Noah Glaister, offers an elegant suggestion of a ranch-style house complete with period appliances and old-lady tchotchkes. The action is augmented by music from a live band (vocals by Madeline Sclichter, guitar by Ryan McFarland, bass by Leelin Bowser, and drums by Jesse Walls) that could have benefitted from a more prominent placement than behind the house right audience; although I saw their billing in the program, I didn’t realize they were in the room with us until the very last scene.
True West considers an overlooked truism about violence in America, that murder most often occurs between people who know each other. Austin initially scoffs at Lee’s suggestion that “family people” are the likeliest to kill each other, insisting that the two of them are above such insanity, before Shepard walks them right up to that very ledge and invites the audience to peer over it.
Shepard’s clear-eyed look at the real-life underpinnings of violence is accentuated in this production by dynamic fight choreography, presumably by director Muñoz, who specializes in stage combat, with assistant Christopher Rone. Palombo and McCollum really sell it, throwing each other around and situating their potentially deadly sibling rivalry in a wide berth of humor.
True West runs through October 4 at Three Stories (937 Liberty Avenue).
Jordana Rosenfeld is a writer and critic living in Pittsburgh.
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