Shepard's Classic, Combustible TRUE WEST Closes Gamm Season

The Sandra Feinstein-Gamm Theatre (The Gamm) closes Season 34 with True West by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Sam Shepard. Gamm Artistic Director Tony Estrella directs this legendary black comedy about sibling rivalry, male angst and the fragility of the American Dream. Steve Kidd (Astrov in Uncle Vanya) and Anthony Goes (Stanley in A Streetcar Named Desire) play feuding brothers whose longstanding tensions simmer and boil over in the kitchen of their childhood home, before exploding on a hilarious and horrifying scale.

"Shepard earned the title 'poet laureate of America's emotional badlands' by delving into the bleakest corners of family life. In this truly American classic, he seems to be asking, 'What is the true west? Where is the edge of American civilization?' Shepard locates that frontier in each of us, animating the thin veneer that separates savagery from civility," Estrella said. "The Gamm's very first production 35 years ago was Shepard's unclassifiable one-act Cowboy Mouth. True West is one of the all-time greatest American plays and the first Shepard work we have embarked on in too long of a time. It's good to have him back with what feels like a Cain and Abel origin story for the chaotic American present."

True West runs April 11-May 5 at The Gamm Theatre, 1245 Jefferson Blvd., Warwick, RI.Tickets are $44, $52 and $60; preview performances (April 11-14) are $33. Call 401-723-4266 or order at gammtheatre.org.

In suburban California, estranged brothers Austin and Lee reunite unexpectedly in their mother's home. Austin, a family man and budding screenwriter, is at work on a new script. Lee, a drifter with a plan to rob the neighborhood of household appliances, drops in and stays. Soon he is pitching his own idea for a trashy Western to Austin's Hollywood agent