The play focuses on two brothers who are staying in their mother’s house while she is in Alaska. The younger brother, Austin, is an Ivy League educated writer, married with children. He is working at his mother’s home to write a screenplay he has pitched to Hollywood producer Saul Kimmer. Lee, in stark contrast to his brother, is a drunken drifter and petty thief who brings an uncomfortable aura of violence into the house. He is there after spending three months in the desert; he has no particular place to go. The competition and envy between the brothers come to a head when Lee employs charm and a strong golf game—both unexpected—to con the movie mogul into choosing to produce Lee’s “authentic” western story over Austin’s artistic love story. Lee, virtually illiterate, bullies Austin into writing first the outline and then the screenplay; in exchange, Lee will take Austin into the desert with him. The two brothers seem to trade places and chaos ensues until their mother returns. This outline of the plot does not do justice to the humor and violence that exist side-by-side, nor to the absurdism that lurks behind the play’s naturalism.

Leigh-Ann Santillanes, in her strongest directorial effort to date, carefully builds the characterizations of the brothers until their final explosive confrontation, and she provides some fine stage business. Santillanes is on target in casting Thane Kenny and Richard Boehler—two familiar faces—as Lee and Austin. Kenny is menacing as the loutish older brother. His jealousy is palpable (“I always wondered what it would be like to be you”) and his temper hair-trigger. Seeing Kenny as Lee hunched over the portable typewriter, pecking at keys in an attempt to capture his amorphous ideas on paper, is memorable. Boehler keeps his considerable comic quirkiness under wraps during the first half of the play as he portrays the conservative Austin tolerating his brother. After Lee’s movie idea is chosen over Austin’s, however, Boehler unleashes his comedic skills. Boehler plays the best drunk since the late, lamented Mark Guest.

The two supporting actors are more problematical, both in the author’s presentation and the actors’ portrayal. Darryl Deloach is pleasant enough as Saul Kimmer, but he doesn’t bring any Hollywood pizzazz or bling in his mannerisms or costume. Gail Spidle is distant and unemotional in her brief appearance as Mom, but that is how Shepard writes her—perhaps to help explain her sons’ strangeness.

True West” (premiered in 1980) can be enjoyed simply on its own terms, but it also invites deeper analysis. The brothers may be two sides of their complex creator or two aspects of the mythic American west. Or both. Go and see for yourself.

If You Go

WHAT: “True West” by Sam Shepard

WHEN: Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m., Sunday at 6 p.m. through February 3

WHERE: The Vortex Theatre, 2004½ Central, SE HOW MUCH: $12. Reservations 247-8600

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