The Back Bay Courant, Tuesday, June 23, 1998

True West

by Jules Becker
Theater Editor

Few playwrights make family dysfunction as powerfully disturbing as Sam Shepard. Both the self-destructive family of Curse of the Starving Class (1977) and the oddball relatives of his Pulitzer Prize- winning Buried Child (1977) could make the Addams Family look normal. If the sibling rivalry of the later True West (1980), now in a blisteringly vivid Stanley B Theatre staging at Hyde Park's Riverside Theatre Works (through July 19), seems mellow by comparison, the reason may lie in a clever balancing act of alienation and attempted reconciliation.

For much of Shepard's tension-rich play, wanderer-house robber Lee and writer-academic Austin seem to be brothers in name only. Confrontational Lee resents north-dwelling family man Austin's extended stay at their Alaska-visiting mother's home as he writes a screenplay. Eventually, the competition and friction between them extends to Lee's own idea for a screenplay - "true to life stuff," he contends - and Hollywood producer Saul's decision to film it rather than Austin's.

References to paradise and the desert (here the nearby Mojave) and scenes that seethe with conflict waiting to explode suggest a mythic or biblical family with universal implications. Could Lee be a modem Cain and Austin an Abel still alive? Could the traveling mother and unseen, bankrupt father be a contemporary variation on the Adam and Eve who were banished from Eden? If Shepard tantalizingly leaves these questions up in the air, True West does make a compelling call in the playwright's stoic way for a deep emotional life and understanding missing from more and more American families at the turn of the millennium.

Director Bob Roth sharply highlights Shepard's timely insights about family, the West in reality and the imagination and the nature of the creative process. Central to that sharpness is Bruce-Robert Serafin's electrifying performance as Lee. Serafin brings as much edge to Lee's statement about not sleeping as he does to the man's attitude and outbursts, making a mess of designer Michael Patrick's contrastingly smart yet underrated kitchen set. Capturing Lee's feeling as well as his fire, Serafin is an actor with boundless potential.

Dennis Sean Strahan does well with Austin's early easy going temperament. Once Shepard begins to turn the tables on the brothers so that Austin and Lee virtually trade places, Strahan needs more compelling darkness. Ed Sorrell is properly elusive as Saul but could do with more enthusiasm about Lee's script idea. Johanna Wincr conveys Mom's disconcerting politeness yet should be colder in her responses. For Shcpard, family tics arc as menacing as undetonated landmines. Stanley B 's True West makes that menace connect with explosive persuasiveness.