True West

There’s a riveting revival of TRUE WEST at Circle in the Square. Its impact can be attributed in large part to the partnering of its two lead actors, Philip Seymour Hoffman and John C. Reilly. As the two estranged brothers, Austin and Lee, they epitomize every nightmarish moment of sibling rivalry including physical combat and psychological warfare.

In this current production, the two actors swap roles every three performances, a dynamic situation that parallels the course of the drama in which role swapping takes on a virulent reality. Here, the rationalized, superego called Austin and the physically abusive brother Lee who plays out the life of the mind in fantasy, morph into each other. What makes for dramatic tension is that the two, in fact, couldn’t be more opposite.

"True" is perhaps the most misused and ironical word in TRUE WEST which is about falseness, and the pervasive lack of reality that inhabits the two boys constant activity, movie writing. As Austin, the educated, married screenwriter who identifies being in touch with shopping at the Safeway, inhaling the smog on the freeway and watching the news on color TV, declares, "nothing’s real". And his transformation is motivated by that perception. Lee, on the other hand, a petty thief who talks to the cactus in the desert where he lives, tantalizes his brother with his sense of adventure and his violent grasp on life.

As the situation between the two escalates, it grows entirely out of hand. A radical look at the power struggle between two men or between the self and the other, TRUE WEST is vibrant, cathartic, and grossly comic, a classic American drama that’s not be missed.

That’s This Week on Broadway. I’m Isa Goldberg.