True West review: Opening punch leaves audience already on canvas
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Flight Path Theatre, January 4.
Had Sam Shepard been a boxer, he may well have favoured removing the gloves. His writing has a rawness seldom matched in drama, so words become weapons that open wounds old and new, while his characters are bruised and scarred by each other and by the bleak business of being alive.
Ryan Brown and Austin Hayden give powerful performances in True West.
In Shepardâs
True West (1980), the sheltered life of Austin (played by Ryan Brown) as a screenwriter is trashed by the arrival of his older brother, Lee (Austin Hayden), a professional thief, dedicated drinker and dog-fight enthusiast. The glint of metal from his well-worn steel-capped boots in Georgina Symesâ production proclaims his menace, and Haydenâs Lee is played with the relentlessness of a battering