True
West
Os Lisbon Players apresentaram
em Maio e Junho de 2004 “True West” de Sam Shepard.
Escrita em 1980, a peça é uma das melhores de Shepard.
Aborda a relação entre dois irmãos que, inesperadamente
e contra vontade, partilham uma casa enquanto a sua mãe está
de férias no Alasca. O irmão mais velho, Lee, é
um vagabundo falhado que aparece depois de uma ausência de
cinco anos, para grande surpresa de Austin, o mais novo. O irmão
mais novo é um guionista de Hollywood que aproveita a ausência
da mãe para acabar um guião que acredita que assegurará
o seu futuro. É a evolução do relacionamento
entre os irmãos que rege a peça e leva o público
de um humor leve a uma extrema violência, à medida
que Lee e Austin lutam para enfrentar a natureza inconstante do
seu relacionamento.
Encenação : Grant
Shepherd
Elenco
Lee - Grant Shepherd
Austin - Tim Seconde
Saul Kimmer - Gonçalo da Graça Pereira
Mom - Joan Foster da Silva
Where is the true west? Is it the wide lands where
real men, gun-toting men, ride off into the sunset, or is it the
claustrophobic ‘paradise’ of the Southern California
suburb where this play is set?
This play, written by Sam Shepard in 1980, poses this question,
but it also suggests the duality that the characters have within
them – the poet and the man of action, the criminal and the
family man, the realist and the fantasist, the manipulator and the
manipulated, the artist and the philistine.
Two brothers, Austin and Lee, played by Tim Seconde and Grant Shepherd
respectively, progeny of a highly dysfunctional family, are house-sitting
for their mother while she’s on a trip to Alaska. A sonic
background of crickets and the howling of coyotes remind us that
though the frontiers of the Wild West have been pushed back, it’s
still out there somewhere. Mild mannered screen-writer Austin and
edgy criminal psychopath Lee are seen gradually and convincingly
taking on the characteristics and behaviour of the other as the
action proceeds. Austin ends up drunk, sweating and violent; no-hoper
Lee has perhaps, amazingly, made it in the world that Austin aspires
to inhabit by presenting a scenario for a trashy contemporary Western.
This touches on another aspect of the play: it is also a critique
of the compromise and corruption involved in working in the movie
industry. ( ….it’s a movie, not a film, says Lee, films
is what they make in France).
Both Tim Seconde and Grant Shepherd (who also directed) manage to
convince both in their separate depiction of the two brothers and
also, crucially, in the relationship they have with each other.
There are one or two moments in the play where, in a piece that
is basically realistic rather than symbolic, one has to strain a
bit to suspend one’s disbelief, but these moments I feel are
flaws in the writing rather than in the performances. Both actors
succeed in bringing us into their fragile and dangerous world, where
the banal jostles with the threatening, where the wrong word, the
wrong inflexion can bring on a rush of terror. There are also some
very funny moments.
Though dominated by the brothers, there are short appearances by
the film producer, Saul, and by their mother, who arrives unexpectedly
from Alaska when things are really starting to fall apart. These
two cameos are ably undertaken by Gonçalo da Graça
Pereira (although as a non-native English speaker I felt that his
foreigner-in-California status could have been more fully explored)
and Joan Foster da Silva who gave us a suitably dotty and bemused
mom.
A challenging, thought-provoking and accessible production.
Jonathan Weightman
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