THEATRE

TRUE WEST

Ensemble Theatre, September 12

Until October 11

Reviewed by JOHN SHAND

★★★★½

Simon Maiden’s Lee creates a tension thick with latent violence, a black hole of negative energy. His blank eyes stare with hate and resentment. “You go ahead, like I wasn’t even here,” he tells his brother Austin (Darcy Kent), who’s trying to write a screenplay, but Austin may as well try to imagine a world without sibling rivalry.

In Sam Shepard’s supreme 1980 play True West , Lee, the elder brother, is the daredevil, wastrel and lost soul capable of physical violence and minor criminality. He lobs in on the college-educated, mild-mannered Austin, who’s house-minding – plant-minding, primarily – for their mother while she’s in Alaska. Austin’s using her southern California bungalow as

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