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.
If the charismatic Hawke all but wipes the floor with Dano in the play's first half, Dano gets his turn to act out in Act Two. These are showcase roles, and the actors play them with gusto. James Macdonald's Roundabout Theatre Company production occasionally errs on the side of the obvious: Marylouise Burke brings her customary off-kilter comic panache to her cameo as the brothers' late-returning mom, but Gary Wilmes smears an extra layer of grease on the already oleaginous role of a Hollywood producer, and a showy change of lighting undermines Austin's big story about how his dissolute father lost two pairs of teeth.
Now the Roundabout Theatre Company takes a whack at this testosterone- and booze-soaked brotherly beatdown, and the results are disappointingly wan. First, credit where it's due: British director James Macdonald treats the script as if it were a well-built drama, and not the scrappy excuse for histrionics and set bashing that it basically is. Macdonald's intelligent, detailed work reveals the play's symmetries, its nicely orchestrated musical qualities that alternate crashing violence and noise with hushed moments of melancholy. In other words, this is the most well-behaved True West I've ever seen.
| 2000 | Broadway |
Broadway Revival Broadway |
| West End |
West End Production West End |
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| 2018 | Broadway |
Roundabout Theatre Company Broadway Production Broadway |
| Year | Ceremony | Category | Nominee |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | Drama League Awards | Distinguished Performance Award | Ethan Hawke |
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