Since Cain and Abel , and probably before, siblings have been at one another's throats, mostly figuratively, sometimes literally. Lee and Adrian are fine examples of the relationship in "True West," the Sam Shepard drama that keeps things buzzing in the first production of HotCity's 2011 season. It opened over the weekend at the Kranzberg Arts Center in Grand Center and will run through Feb. 19.
Shepard, one of the most exciting playwrights of the latter part of the 20th century, wrote harshly about the American dream and the people who chase it, using wry humor, stubbornness and flashes of violence, usually among outcasts in a lonely part of the American West. Families epitomize dysfunctional; the brothers, Lee and Austin, and Mom are prime examples.
We're in the late 1970s BC (Before Computers) and Austin (Scott McMaster) is working on a Formica-topped kitchen table, using a rather battered portable typewriter. His brother, Lee (Kevin Crowley), slightly drunk, enters. We learn that Lee, who works alternately on a bottle of Jim Bean and cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon, has been living in the desert but has come to town to stay with Mom while he burglarizes nearby houses. Austin has been house-sitting while Mom is vacationing in Alaska and he is writing a screenplay. He has a family somewhere else, but they are non-factors. Lee and Austin also have a father, a presence only in the hold he still has over his sons and their conversations about him.
It's obvious that Lee intimidates his younger brother, and that he's a hustler, a thief, a man without a conscience, with the street smarts to size up a situation in a hurry and move to take advantage of it with a combination of big balls and bigger baloney.
We see this the next day when Saul Kimmer (Alan Knoll), Austin's movie producer, shows up for a meeting. Knoll, who seems to have set this theater season as the one to brighten every theatrical company in town, powerfully emphasizes the caricature that Shepard has drawn but occasionally slides over the top, losing some impact. Saul is an update of Sammy Glick, the "hero" of Budd Schulberg's "What Makes Sammy Run," the 1941 novel that froze Hollywood in an ice tray it has yet to escape.
But Lee sees an opening to insert himself, to out-con the con man, and before the scene ends, a golf date has been arranged and Saul is showing interest in a screenplay that Lee is obviously making up on the spot.
Lee switches from bourbon to gin for the second act and Austin decides that he can be as big a thief as his brother, with toasters as his goal.
Despite fine performances from Crowley and McMaster, and Crowley displays anger extremely well, a very brief appearance by Nancy Lewis steals the show. She's Mom, of course, and when she stands in the doorway on her return from Alaska, she doesn't have to say anything. The look in her eye, the curl of her lip speak volumes, and her sons turn into gibbering idiots. It's a moment when her brilliance towers over the evening.
Doug Finlayson's direction is winning, and Jim Burwinkel designed set and lights that are just right. Scott Breihan's costumes are eye-catching, especially the pink shirt on Knoll and the Cossack shirt and suede boots on Lewis.
"True West" offers splendid roles, and splendid actors have filled them. The 1980 San Francisco opening featured Tommy Lee Jones as Austin and Peter Boyle as Lee, and the Chicago cast, that later moved to New York, had Gary Sinise and John Malkovich as Austin and Lee, respectively. The 2000 New York revival took a different tack. Philip Seymour Hoffman and John C. Reilly alternated in the roles, taking the conceit that the two men, as brothers, could be described as two halves of one man.
True West, a production of HotCity Theatre, is at the Kranzberg Art Center through Feb. 19
—Joe