Opposites attack in Sam Shepard's Pulitzer Prize-nominated play about two brothers with more in common than they think.
Broadway fireworks don't get more combustible than this powerhouse new production - on Broadway through March 17 only. Two of this generation's hottest actors face off as estranged brothers in an empty California home, and the sparks truly fly. The New York Times says, "Ethan Hawke delivers a faultless performance, probably his best ever onstage," and The Wall Street Journal says, "everything Paul Dano does is excitingly surprising." Don't miss director James MacDonald's suspenseful, smoldering True West. "It's as funny as it is serious, as entertaining as it is profound" (New York Stage Review).
James Macdonald directs Ethan Hawke and Paul Dano in the play's first Broadway revival, with set design by Mimi Lien, costume design by Kaye Voyce, lighting design by Jane Cox, hair & wig design by Tom Watson, and original music & sound design by Bray Poor.
How can one actor be so good and another so misguided in the same production? That bizarre mash-up happens in the Roundabout's new revival of Sam Shepard's 'True West,' which opened Thursday at Broadway's American Airlines Theatre. Indeed, how can Ethan Hawke deliver such a grandiose, inspired performance as the bad brother Lee across the stage from a wan, overly ironic performance by Paul Dano that flirts with embodying, but never grabs hold of, the good brother Austin? James Macdonald directs this very unbalanced spectacle.
Hawke is lighting a fire (literally and figuratively) at the center of the play and clearly having a ball doing it. But on the other side of things, through some imperfect alchemy of actor, director, and character, Dano's Austin can't take the heat. He's so recessive for so long that Lee has nothing much to push against. Shepard builds tension between the brothers scene by scene, but here, an Austin who bends, deflates, and dwindles so easily and so consistently starts to make the play feel repetitive rather than cumulative, a drone rather than a gradual ribcage-rattling crescendo. When Dano finally reaches Austin's key aria - in which he quietly tells Lee the grim, pathetic story of their alcoholic father's trip to Juarez to get all his teeth pulled by a backstreet dentist - he's at last in his melancholy element. But the road to get there has been long and frustratingly flat.
2000 | Broadway |
Broadway Revival Broadway |
West End |
West End Production West End |
|
2018 | Broadway |
Roundabout Theatre Company Broadway Production Broadway |
Year | Ceremony | Category | Nominee |
---|---|---|---|
2019 | Drama League Awards | Distinguished Performance Award | Ethan Hawke |
Videos