Expression Productions' True West handles Sam Shepard's script masterfully. Timothy Meehan's Lee drives the action with his menace, forcing his brother to stand up to him. John Gilligan's Austin is a study in peculiar contrast, attempted diplomacy that falls into animosity. The play starts in an awkward situation and continues to decline through discomfort and ends in destruction and fear.
Sam Shepard's work continues the experiment in the decay of the American nuclear family.
In Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman and View from the Bridge and Tennessee Williams' Cat on a Hot Tim Roof, the family is fractured but still more or less intact.
In Williams' Streetcar Named Desire and Glass Menagerie, the family is irreparably broken yet still hanging on to the myth.
In Shepard's work the pieces are scattered over the wide western landscape and the fragments intermittently try to reunite in the same odd, accidental space, reaching for unity, but they do not know the first thing of how to go about reunion.
David Mamet's early plays take it one more step. The family is absent, possibly in touch by phone but never on stage. The characters are devoid of familiarity. They can only claw at each other in context-deficient desperation.
Theatre in San Francisco is a collection of experiences. Expression Productions is dedicated to the small stage, small cast model with the focus on the density of thought and action, providing the audience with an intimate experience.
True West plays at the Noh Space, 2840 Mariposa Street, San Francisco.
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