Opposites attack in Sam Shepard's Pulitzer Prize-nominated play about two brothers with more in common than they think.
Broadway fireworks don't get more combustible than this powerhouse new production - on Broadway through March 17 only. Two of this generation's hottest actors face off as estranged brothers in an empty California home, and the sparks truly fly. The New York Times says, "Ethan Hawke delivers a faultless performance, probably his best ever onstage," and The Wall Street Journal says, "everything Paul Dano does is excitingly surprising." Don't miss director James MacDonald's suspenseful, smoldering True West. "It's as funny as it is serious, as entertaining as it is profound" (New York Stage Review).
James Macdonald directs Ethan Hawke and Paul Dano in the play's first Broadway revival, with set design by Mimi Lien, costume design by Kaye Voyce, lighting design by Jane Cox, hair & wig design by Tom Watson, and original music & sound design by Bray Poor.
True West, that drama of Cain-and-Abel family dynamics and masculinity stunted like a Joshua tree is back on Broadway. Probably Sam Shepard's most popular play and the one in which his artistry and his preoccupations collide most openly and honestly, True West is catnip - or neat whiskey - to a certain kind of male actor with an interest in both indulging a macho sensibility and deconstructing it. For this production, the Roundabout, under James Macdonald's direction, has brought together Ethan Hawke and Paul Dano, who somehow produce all the great upheaval of a 10-gallon hat left out in a drizzle.
How can one actor be so good and another so misguided in the same production? That bizarre mash-up happens in the Roundabout's new revival of Sam Shepard's 'True West,' which opened Thursday at Broadway's American Airlines Theatre. Indeed, how can Ethan Hawke deliver such a grandiose, inspired performance as the bad brother Lee across the stage from a wan, overly ironic performance by Paul Dano that flirts with embodying, but never grabs hold of, the good brother Austin? James Macdonald directs this very unbalanced spectacle.
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