In the unlikely setting of a small civic theater in downtown Aurora, director Jim Corti and crew are staging what appears to be an ongoing series of very intense and distinctive versions of 20th century American classics of the kind theaters don’t produce as much anymore. First up in the Bold Series was a fabulous staging of “A Streetcar Named Desire.” He’s followed that this summer with a dynamic little take on Sam Shepard’s “True West,” drawing on Corti’s long-established ability to cast just the right actors.
“True West” is a masterwork that always will be associated here with the famously menacing Steppenwolf Theatre production starring John Malkovich and Gary Sinise. That said, I was struck Wednesday night by how few people in the full house seemed to have seen the play before, based on what I overheard. Paramount’s Bold Series draws on the subscriber base for its series of mainstream musicals, pushing them to expand their horizons. So the surprises Shepard baked into the script are on full display.
“True West,” written in 1980, is set in small Southern Californian home on the outskirts of the Mojave Desert. The two main characters, Austin (Jack Ball) and Lee (Ben Page) are brothers and the home is owned by their mom (Caron Buinis), who is vacationing in Alaska. Austin is an Ivy League writer trying to sell a screenplay to an agent named Saul (Joshua L. Green). Lee, older, is a menacing and opportunistic drifter. Job one with any staging of “True West” is that you have to believe these two guys are brothers even as you marvel how two men so different could possibly be related.
The stripped-down construction of the play, which takes place over three days as each act shifts from morning to night, could not be tighter. On a symbolic level, the play is about the mythology of the so-called Old West, now in an atrophied state: Austin is the elite arriviste, making money from that myth; Lee the scary but authentic cowboy. But the two brother are clearly also two halves of the late writer himself: one part being politically conservative, famously dysfunctional and even self-destructive, as I once saw in person when he was in Chicago, the other being expediently progressive, intellectually adroit and poetically eloquent. Both of these actors embody those distinct qualities under Corti’s direction and that makes the drama of mutually assured destruction hum along here in a most satisfying fashion, especially since it comes replete with entertaining supporting work from Green and Buinis. “True West” is supposed to roar between absurd comedy and horror and indeed it does in Aurora.
A new biography of the late Shepard by Robert Dowling, soon to be released, argues that Lee is the real Shepard and Austin a personification of the things that Shepard had come to believe he needed to embrace to succeed in show business. That feels about right although these days the play also functions as a balanced portrait of the great schism between left and right in America that has opened up so great a hole in the soul of the nation that it threatens to swallow it whole.
“True West,” to my mind, could accommodate even more intensity than these two actors forge here. But there’s not a moment here that does not ring true and essential, on a clever set from Lauren M. Nichols that follows the playwright’s demand that there be no expressionistic weirdness. Frankly, I was blown away by how well this play works in the here and now, how relevant it feels. I didn’t feel the same way about “Fool for Love” when I saw it relatively recently at Steppenwolf Theatre, but “True West,” especially Corti’s “True West,” has it all going on. If you’re in shouting distance of Aurora, you won’t regret the roughly 50 bucks or the two hours in its company.
Two brothers, joined at the hip, are ready to rip each other apart even though their fate is endlessly intertwined. Sound familiar, America?
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Chris Jones is a Tribune critic.
Review: “True West” (4 stars)
When: Through Aug. 31
Where: Copley Theatre, 8 E. Galena Blvd.
Running time: 2 hours, 5 minutes
Tickets: $40-55 at 630-896-6666 and paramountaurora.com