Facts about “True West”
The play had its premiere in November 1980
at San Francisco’s Magic Theatre, where he was playwright-in-residence. He felt
it was his best yet. This production was praised by critics for its air of
menace and dark humor. Right after that, TW was prepared for its NY premiere.
This staging was opened to decidedly mixed reviews. The director also replaced
the two unknown San Francisco actors by Peter Boyle and Tommy Lee Jones. Only in
the 82 Steppenwolf Theatre’s production, with performances by John Malcovich as
Lee and Gary Sinise as Austin, True West was revealed as a true Shepard
masterpiece. In a later perfomance the two actors switched roles every other
night which gave a new meaning to the play.
Plot
Austin, a middle-class screenwriter with a wife and
kids, is watching his mom's home, located 
about 40 miles out of Los Angeles as she vacations in Alaska. His
brother, Lee, a hard-drinking, foul-mouthed drifter and petty thief, blows into
the house like a tumbleweed, fresh from his latest round of pit-bull fights
somewhere in the Mojave. Austin wants to be left alone to work on his
screenplay; Lee is casing the neighborhood to see what he can steal. The
brothers have an uneasy relationship with one another and with their unseen
father, a toothless alcoholic wasting away in "some other desert."
With the appearance of Saul Kimmer, a cheesy
Hollywood producer, the strory gets a different twist. While Austin tries to
sell his new play, a love story, to Saul, Lee comes home with a stolen TV and
proposes his idea of a western to the producer. Saul likes Lee's idea better and
asks Austin to write the script for Lee's western.
Austin, disillusioned by the fact
that his never-do-well brother's idea was accepted and not his, starts to
degenerate. He gets drunk, steals all the toasters in the neighbourhood and
decides to go to the desert with his brother.
Lee, on the other hand, becoms ambitious and wants
to sell his play. This reversal of roles results in arguments and fights in
which the two brothers make a huge chaos in their mother's house.