True West
by Sam Shepard
Directed by Matthew Dunster
Designed by Jon Bausor
Music by Johnny Flynn & Joe Zeitlein
Vaudeville Theatre, London
Friday 7th December 2018, 19.30
CAST
Kit Harington – Austin
Johnny Flynn – Lee
Madeleine Potter – Mom
Donald Sage Mackay – Saul Kimmer, a Hollywood producer
Kit Harington as Austin, Donald Sage Mackay as Saul, Johnny Flynn as Lee
It’s an American play. There will be one detailed set, two star actors and a company of four altogether. It’s the template. We knew that before we went in.
The big name because of Game of Thrones is Kit “Jon Snow” Harington, but for us it was the director and co-star that led us to buy tickets. Matthew Dunster is also current with A Very Very Very Dark Matter at The Bridge Theatre. Johnny Flynn was in the original Jerusalem production, then Hangmen by McDonagh, also directed by Matthew Dunster in 2015, and this year starred as William Dobbin in the TV series Vanity Fair, as well as performing with his band at Hyde Park, supporting Paul Simon and James Taylor. (And a later addition, as Felix in Les Miserables TV series starting on 30th December).
Kit Harington as Austin, Johnny Flynn as Lee
True West dates from 1980, and while considered an American classic, this is heralded as its first West End production. That’s a bit geographically precise, as it was done over the river at the National Theatre in 1981 with Antony Sher and Bob Hoskins, then only yards from the main West End theatres at the Donmar with Mark Rylance and Michael Rudko swapping roles in 1995. Does West End mean “commercial”?
It’s set when it was written, around 1980. A long tussle with a typewriter ribbon dictates that, and the TV watched briefly is black and white to match.
Austin (Kit Harington) is a scriptwriter in suburban California. His wild older brother Lee turns up after 5 years, much spent in the Mojave desert. He also is a thief, stealing TVs. Austin is pitching a screenplay to Hollywood producer Saul. The wilder Lee takes over and pitches his “True West” script to Saul, and gets preferred over Austin.
Johnny Flynn as Lee, Kit Harington as Austin
In Act 2, Austin tries to emulate Lee’s thieving, by (hilariously) stealing massed ranks of toasters, and gradually Austin becomes the wild drunk, eventually trying to garrot Lee. Lee tries to write but can’t handle it. At one point the wall of the (fabulous) set disappears to reveal desert with heat lights.
Austin has to make toast in the toasters too, and create a stack of it. Lots of extension leads are required. I agree with Sarah Crompton’s comment in her review for What’s On Stage on the toasters – placing them on the floor along the very front of the stage made them hard to see from our seats – they were also right at the edge and therefore losing the stage light. It’s such a major point that I’d have found a way of getting them up to waist level. Sam Shepard’s script says specifically that they are lined up on the sink counter. Then you could have six or eight sockets and eliminate those long leads. Sometimes the script is right! My shorter companion didn’t see the toasters at all (E1 and E2, side seats in Row E) and also missed much of the scene where both Austin and Lee are lying drunkenly on the stage (stage left) again right at the front. She missed much of the wonderful fight at floor level. Couldn’t see it. Not only that, when both go into the desert at the end, they walked beyond seat E1’s viewing angle.
The set looks so good with its receding angles and meticulous detail, but to me a starting point in designing it would be the need to get the row of stolen toasters prominent and well-lit. You also should consider the physical theatre. The Vaudeville Theatre (where we have seen four Oscar Wilde plays in the last year) is a proscenium stage with a very shallow rake in the auditorium, looking up, virtually no rake at the front. So do not play crucial stuff lying on the floor. Heads in front block so much of the view of the stage floor. Not a problem with Oscar Wilde. A major issue here.
The general interpretation is that Lee is Austin’s other side. He appears as if from nowhere while Austin is writing by candlelight. At the end, they appear to meld into one body at the blackout. Maybe Saul and Mom are figments too. Mom also just appears. That’s a comparison with McDonagh’s A Very Very Very Dark Matter also directed by Matthew Dunster, where a writer has an alter ego (or in McDonagh’s play, anima / animus).
The physical acting is first class from both (I thought the bits between and during dialogue better than the text). In the programme, Johnny Flynn says:
There are lots of leading roles in great plays where I imagine it might be thrilling for a bit, but actually you might get lonely, showboating on your own every night. This is a tennis match.
And it is. They bounce off each other superbly which is the great thing about the production, BUT I found the text somewhat dull in Act One and in Act Two, it was the physical stuff between them that enlivened it. The scene with the typewriter ribbon is very funny, but I’d credit Flynn’s acting and expressions for the full impact.
Johnny Flynn as Lee with typewriter ribbon
Mom’s laconic appearance late on, reviewing the havoc they’d created in her house so dispassionately as Austin tries to kill Lee, is well done by Madeleine Potter. Their only role was to water her plants, and they’ve all died.
Madeleine Potter as Mom
It may be an American classic, and highly acclaimed, but to me, Sam Shepard is. Championship to Martin McDonagh, Jez Butterworth or Laura Wade’s Premier League. As I said at the start, it’s paint by numbers Modern American Drama. Small cast. Two star actors, two very good others, lots of emotive ranting, one incredibly detailed realistic set. Not only that, but it’s a script about scriptwriting. Writing about being a writer is like singing about being a singer, too self-absorbed. There is a wild streak in Shepard, but he still fits within that rigid American template.
Matthew Dunster said:
“There is something dangerous about True West. It’s always unsettled me. I was always scared of reading it. Fearful of its burning content but also of its brilliance. When Sam Shepard died I went back to it and I knew I had to find way of doing it. And I have questions about the play: Is it about two brothers, or is it about how we all grapple with two sides of ourselves, thought by thought, dream by dream? Was the promise of the ‘West’, or is the promise of any mythical dream, really ‘True’? You need the very best actors to take this kind of play on. You preferably need two actors who can sniff the danger and are prepared to be unsettled and to unsettle. To have Kit and Johnny with me to ask the questions, and to take on these roles in Shepard’s masterpiece, is as exciting as my job gets. I can’t wait!”
I agree that both the lead actors are stellar and work so well together. Both have charisma (Flynn always does; Harington was a revelation). They had rare chemistry. Their interaction was five star acting and direction.
The set looks fabulous. BUT it doesn’t work well with the toasters or with the action at low level. I really don’t think the play itself is particularly good. At the interval, 40 minutes in, my thoughts were going to one to two stars. The second act was vastly better. But the director and designer failed totally to take the constraints of the auditorium seating versus the stage in this particular theatre into account. Direction 101 – relate to the space. However, seeing Harrington and Flynn together makes it worthwhile. One plus one equals three. Christopher Hart’s Sunday Times review sums it up perfectly.
***
MUSIC CREDITS
Johnny Flynn co-composed the original music. My normal gripe: No programme credit for “Red Sails In The Sunset” which is demanded by the text. Hugh Williams and Jimmy Kennedy wrote it.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAID
four star
Henry Hitchins, Evening Standard ****
Ben Dowell, Radio Times ****
Fergus Morgan, The Stage ****
The two hour staging is swift, never lingering. Jon Bausor’s set – a disorientating, skew-whiff sitting room – is furnished with delicate period details, and has an eye-opening, wall-removing coup up its sleeve towards the closing moments. Ian Dickinson’s sound design fills the air with chirping crickets: you can almost feel the heat, almost smell the sweat.
three star
Michael Billington, The Guardian ***
Shepard also writes superbly for actors. Lee and Austin are both two sides of a single personality and yet wildly different: they represent, to put it crudely, the instinctual and intellectual aspects of the American character. While Harington and Flynn are fine actors, my only complaint is that they are too alike in that they both rely on a strong, highly sexualised charisma. Harington as Austin has to work overtime to suggest he is a passive, deskbound screenwriter. Equally, Flynn struggles to convey the idea of Lee’s secret longings for stability and quietude.
Domenic Cavendish, Telegraph ***
(I don’t think you should review a play for which you’ve done the programme notes, as Mr Cavendish has – and they’re very good too)
Having been as wooden as a Westeros draw-bridge in a dire Faustus two years ago, a heavily moustachioed Harington proves his mettle in this latest stage outing. Initially hunched, bespectacled, old before his time and very much of his period, he’s afraid, resentful, envious too of his untamed older brother, who materialises like a phantom when Austin lights a candle amid Jon Bausor’s perspective-skewed interior. For his part, Flynn conjures a due sense of outward macho poise and latent insecurity: chain-smoking, beer- and liquor-swigging – and, when the going gets testy, swinging a golf-club with calculated abandon.
Christopher Hart, Sunday Times ***
It’s a moderately amusing play, but it really isn’t a great one, and it’s questionable whether it’s worth this well-crafted new production from Matthew Dunster. But it is, to repeat, a terrific actors’ play, and watching Harington and Flynn at work is a real pleasure. Just don’t expect the story to grab you.
Paul Taylor, Independent ***
Ann Treneman, The Times ***
Mark Shenton, London Theatre ***
Rosemary Waugh, Time Out ***
Ian Shuttleworth, Financial Times ***
two star
Quentin Letts, Daily Mail **
There are some unconvincing references and a brief view of the Mojave Desert but none of it is quite enough to explain the brothers’ self-destructive relationship. Little of the plot is believable. Mr Flynn towers above Mr Harington physically but the two actors are well matched in their commitment. Flynn only has to curl his lip an eighth of an inch to give us an idea of Lee’s malevolence. ‘Thrones’ fans may enjoy seeing their pin-up prove his stage credentials but the two lead actors deserve a stronger play than this suffocating, unsatisfying tale.
one star
Sarah Crompton, What’s On Stage *
one of the worst acted and least convincing productions of any Shepard play that I have ever seen … He muffs the play’s best joke – about a collection of stolen toasters – by an over-elaborate and hard-to-see staging and over-complicates its dreamy, powerfully-poised vision of the desert. Everything is simultaneously over-emphasised and underwhelming. It is a dreadful waste of an opportunity to celebrate Shepard – and of everyone’s time.
LINKS ON THIS BLOG
MATTHEW DUNSTER (Director)
A Very Very Very Dark Matter, Martin McDonagh, Bridge Theatre 2018
Much Ado About Nothing, Globe, 2017
Plastic, by Marius von Mayenberg, Bath, 2017
Imogen (Cymbeline Renamed and Reclaimed) – Globe 2016
Hangmen, by Martin McDonagh, Royal Court 2015
Love’s Sacrifice by John Ford, RSC 2015
JOHNNY FLYNN
Johnny Flynn & The Sussex Wit, Hyde Park concert 2108
Hangmen, by Martin McDonagh, Royal Court, London 2015
Twelfth Night, Globe / Apollo 2012 (Viola)
Richard III Globe, Apollo 2012 (Lady Anne / Lord Grey)
Jerusalem by Jez Butterworth, 2011
KIT HARRINGTON
Testament of Youth (FILM)
[…] of Sam Shepard’s ‘True West’ with Kit Harrington and Johnny Flynn added. (https://peterviney.wordpress.com/stage/true-west/) Actors with charisma and chemistry. Not so sure about the […]
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